During the formation of each bacteriophage P22 head, about 250 molecules of the product of gene 8, scaffolding protein, coassemble with and dictate correct assembly of the coat protein into a proper shell structure. At approximately the time that DNA is inserted inside the coat protein shell, all of the scaffolding protein molecules leave the structure. They remain active and participate in several subsequent rounds of shell assembly. Previous work has shown that scaffolding protein gene expression is affected by the head assembly process and has generated the hypothesis that unassembled scaffolding protein negatively modulates the expression of its own gene but that it lacks this activity when complexed with coat protein in proheads. To test this model, a P22 restriction fragment containing the scaffolding and coat protein genes was cloned under control of the lac promoter. These cloned genes were then expressed in an in vitro DNA-dependent transcription-translation reaction. The addition of purified scaffolding protein to this reaction resulted in reduced scaffolding protein synthesis relative to coat and tail protein synthesis to an extent and at a protein concentration that was consistent with the observed reduction in vivo. We conclude that scaffolding protein synthesis is autoregulated and that scaffolding protein is the only phage-coded protein required for this process. In addition, these experiments provide additional evidence that this autoregulation is posttranscriptional.
