Biochemical activities of the BOB1 mutant in Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum MCM.

Minichromosomal maintenance proteins (MCMs) are considered to be the replicative helicase. Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum has a single MCM gene (mtMCM). The crystal structure of the mtMCM N-terminal region is a double hexamer. Structure-guided sequence alignment indicates a structural conservation of this fragment across archaeal and eukaryotic MCMs. The mtMCM structure was successfully used to analyze a Saccharomyces cerevisiae MCM5 mutant, called BOB1, which contains a single residue change from Pro to Leu and bypasses a kinase normally required for initiation of DNA replication. A domain-push model was proposed to explain the BOB1 bypass activity. Here we investigate the effects of BOB1 mutation on the biochemical activities of mtMCM. Surprisingly, the BOB1 mutation (P62L) had a major effect on the helicase activity but had no significant impact on DNA binding and ATPase activities. These results will contribute to a more detailed understanding of the BOB1 bypass activity and other aspects of DNA replication control.

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