{"doi":"10.17615/kzfe-q062","title":"Remote site control of an active site fidelity checkpoint in a viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase","abstract":"The kinetic, thermodynamic, and structural basis for fidelity of nucleic acid polymerases remains controversial. An understanding of viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) fidelity has become a topic of considerable interest as a result of recent experiments that show that a 2-fold increase in fidelity attenuates viral pathogenesis and a 2-fold decrease in fidelity reduces viral fitness. Here we show that a conformational change step preceding phosphoryl transfer is a key fidelity checkpoint for the poliovirus RdRp (3D pol). We provide evidence that this conformational change step is orientation of the triphosphate into a conformation suitable for catalysis, suggesting a kinetic and structural model for RdRp fidelity that can be extrapolated to other classes of nucleic acid polymerases. Finally, we show that a site remote from the catalytic center can control this checkpoint, which occurs at the active site. Importantly, similar connections between a remote site and the active site exist in a wide variety of viral RdRps. The capacity for sites remote from the catalytic center to alter fidelity suggests new possibilities for targeting the viral RdRp for antiviral drug development. © 2005 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":142745,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9586,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":602465,"name":"M. Vignuzzi","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":610301,"name":"J.K. Stone","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":610302,"name":"Stone, J.K.","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":522952,"name":"Arnold, J.J.","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":522951,"name":"Cameron, C.E.","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":579114,"name":"R. Andino","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:34.768426Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}