Fig. 1. Effect of the penton base on co-chaperone activity of BAG3. (A). Recombinant proteins used in the assay were obtained as described in Material and Methods. 1µl-portions of the final preparation of GST-BAG3 (BAG), GSTBAG3C (C) and Ad2 base (Base) were resolved on SDS/PAGE and stained with CBB. (B). Effect of J proteins on luciferase refolding. (C). ATPase activity of Hsp70/Hdj1 system was measured in the presence of BAG3 as described in Materials and Methods. (D). Effect of Ad2 penton base protein (Base) and Ad3 penton base protein (Dd) on ATPase activity of Hsp70/Hdj1 system under a stimulatory concentration of BAG3. BAG3 was preincubated with viral proteins for 1 hour at room temperature. The molar concentration of BSA was equal to that of the other proteins. (E). Effect of BAG3 on the Hsp70/Hdj1 system measured with the luciferase refolding assay as described in Materials and Methods. (F). Effect of Ad2 penton base protein (Base) and Ad3 penton base protein (Dd) on luciferase refolding activity of the Hsp70/Hdj1 system under a stimulatory concentration of BAG3. The effect of base proteins was analysed after preincubation with BAG3. The starting level of assay is shown in black in C, D, E, F. Material and Methods Proteins. BAG1S was overexpressed using pBAD24 vector in E.coli RIL BL21 strain. Protein was purified as described by Höhfeld and Jentsch (1997). Hsp70 (HSPA1A) and Hdj1 were overexpressed from pET11b and pET21d vectors respectively, in E.coli RIL BL21 strain and purified according to King et al (2001). Bacterially expressed Tpr2 was a kind gift of Dr W. Obermann. ATPase assay. Hsp70 (4M) was incubated for 2h at 37C in 25l of 40mM Hepes buffer, pH 7.5, containing 150mM KCl, 5mM MgCl2, 400M ATP and 1.25 Ci [32P]-ATP (spec. activity 6000 Ci/mmol, 10.0 mCi/ml), together with proteins. Samples of 1l of the incubation mixture were spotted on PEI-cellulose plates. Plates were resolved in 1M LiCl:1M HCOOH 1:1, dried and the radioactivity of spots corresponding to free phosphate was measured with Phosphoimager (Amersham Pharmacia). When needed 0.25M Hdj1 protein was added. 1 GST-BAG3, GST-BAG3∆C, and GST concentrations varied between 0.4M and 4.0M. Dodecahedra concentrations varied between 0.32M and 1.6M. Viral proteins were preincubated with BAG3 for 1h at room temperature. ATPase activity was defined as the percent of total ATP added to each sample that underwent hydrolysis. All results were corrected for spontaneous ATP hydrolysis. Luciferase refolding assay. Luciferase at final concentration 0.5M (14,6 mg/ml, Promega) and 10M Hsp90 were incubated in 25mM Tris buffer, pH 7.8, containing 8mM MgSO4, 1% BSA, 10% glycerol, 0.25 % Triton X-100, for 5min at 50C. After cooling the incubation mixture was diluted 6-fold in the renaturation buffer: 10 mM Tris, pH 7.5, containing 3mM MgCl2, 50 mM KCl, 2mM DTT, 8mM creatine phosphate, 0.02 units/l creatine kinase, 2mM ATP, 4mM Hsp70. Concentration of Hdj1, Tpr2 and base proteins varied between 0.08 and 3.2µM (Fig. 3A). In other experiments the concentration of Hdj1 was set at 0.25µM (stimulatory for Hsp70) and concentrations of GST-BAG3, GST-BAG3∆C, GST, BAG1S and BSA varied between 0.4 to 4µM (Fig. 3E). In the experiment presented in Fig. 3F the concentration of BAG3 was 0.4µM (stimulatory for Hsp70), and that of penton base and dodecahedron varied between 0.32 to 3.2 µM. Viral proteins were preincubated with BAG3 for 1h at room temperature. Renaturation was carried out at room temperature. After 2h, 5l samples were withdrawn, the substrate (Promega) was added and the activity of renatured luciferase was measured in luminometer (BMG Labtechnologies). Chaperoning activity was expressed as percent of refolded luciferase in comparison to heat-nondenatured luciferase. The assay is described in more detail by Walerych et al (2004). Acknowledgements We are indebted to Aleksandra Helwak for bacterially expressed Hdj1 and BAG1S proteins and to Wolfgang Obermann for bacterially expressed Tpr2 protein. 2