Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 splicing at the major splice donor site is controlled by highly conserved RNA sequence and structural elements

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) splicing has to be strictly controlled to ensure the balanced production of the unspliced and all differently spliced viral RNAs. Splicing at the major 5' splide site (5'ss) that is used for the synthesis of all spliced RNAs is modulated by the local RNA structure and binding of regulatory SR proteins. Here, we demonstrate that the suboptimal sequence complementarity between this 5'ss and U1 small nuclear RNA (snRNA) also contributes to prevent excessive splicing. Analysis of a large set of HIV-1 sequences revealed that all three regulatory features of the 5'ss region (RNA structure, SR protein binding and sequence complementarity with U1 snRNA) are highly conserved amongst virus isolates, which supports their importance. Combined mutations that destabilize the local RNA structure, remove binding sites for inhibitory SR proteins and optimize the U1 snRNA complementarity resulted in almost complete splicing and accordingly reduced virus replication.