Abstract
The papillomavirus E2 open reading frame encodes the full-length E2 protein as well as an alternatively spliced product called E8;E2C. E8;E2C has been best studied for the high-risk human papillomaviruses, where it has been shown to regulate viral genome levels and, like the full-length E2 protein, to repress transcription from the viral promoter that directs the expression of the viral E6 and E7 oncogenes. The repression function of E8;E2C is dependent on the 12-amino-acid N-terminal sequence from the E8 open reading frame (ORF). In order to understand the mechanism by which E8;E2C mediates transcriptional repression, we performed an unbiased proteomic analysis from which we identified six high-confidence candidate interacting proteins (HCIPs) for E8;E2C; the top two are NCoR1 and TBLR1. We established an interaction of E8;E2C with an NCoR1/HDAC3 complex and demonstrated that this interaction requires the wild-type E8 open reading frame. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) knockdown studies demonstrated the involvement of NCoR1/HDAC3 in the E8;E2C-dependent repression of the viral long control region (LCR) promoter. Additional genetic work confirmed that the papillomavirus E2 and E8;E2C proteins repress transcription through distinct mechanisms.