Crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic analysis of a nonstructural protein 15 mutant fromHuman coronavirus 229E
Nonstructural protein 15 (nsp15), also called endoribonuclease, is a gene product of open reading frame 1b (ORF 1b) in coronaviruses. It is an important enzyme in the transcription/replication process involved in discontinuous negative-strand RNA synthesis. In this work, mutants of nsp15 fromHuman coronavirus 229E(HCoV-229E) were made based on structural analysis of the homologous nsp15s inSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus(SARS-CoV) andMouse hepatitis virus(MHV). The I26A/N52A mutant of nsp15 was overexpressed, purified and crystallized, and this mutant led to a trimeric form rather than hexamers or monomers. Crystals of trimeric nsp15 were obtained by the hanging-drop vapour-diffusion method using polyethylene glycol as a precipitant and diffracted to 2.5 Å resolution. The crystals belonged to space groupC2221, with unit-cell parametersa= 85.9,b= 137.5,c= 423.1 Å, α = β = γ = 90°.