Room Temperature Neutron Crystallography of Drug Resistant HIV-1 Protease Uncovers Limitations of X-ray Structural Analysis at 100 K

HIV-1 protease inhibitors are crucial for treatment of HIV-1/AIDS, but their effectiveness is thwarted by rapid emergence of drug resistance. To better understand binding of clinical inhibitors to resistant HIV-1 protease, we used room -temperature joint X-ray/neutron (XN) crystallography to obtain an atomic-resolution structure of the protease triple mutant (V321/147V/V821) in complex with amprenavir. The XN structure reveals a D+ ion located midway between the inner 061 oxygen atoms of the catalytic aspartic acid residues. Comparison of the current XN structure with our previous XN structure of the wild-type HIV-1 proteaseamprenavir complex suggests that the three mutations do not significantly alter the drug enzyme interactions. This is in contrast to the observations in previous 100 K X-ray structures of these complexes that indicated loss of interactions by the drug with the triple mutant protease. These findings, thus, uncover limitations of structural analysis of drug binding using X-ray structures obtained at 100 K.