Nevirapine is a highly potent and specific inhibitor of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) polymerase, but is inactive against HIV-2 and other polymerase. Previous studies demonstrated that residues 176-190 of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) can confer nevirapine sensitivity to HIV-2 RT. To better characterize the role of this sequence in HIV-1 RT, we have progressively substituted residues 176-190 of HIV-2 RT for those of HIV-1 RT and monitored the impact on the kinetic properties; inhibitory activity of nevirapine (11-cyclopropyl-5,11-dihydro-4-methyl-6H-dipyrido[2,3-b:2',3'-e] [1,4]diazepin-6-one), E-BPU (5-ethyl-1-benzyloxymethyl-6-(phenylthio)-uracil), and TIBO-R82150 ((+)-S-4,5,6,7-tetrahydro-5-methyl-6-(3-methyl-2-butenyl)imidazo[4,5,1-j k] [1,4]benzodiazepin-2(1H)-thione); and inhibitor-induced fluorescence changes of the mutant enzymes. The study revealed that in addition to Try-181 and Tyr-188, a new amino acid residue (Gly-190) plays an important role in determining susceptibility to nevirapine and E-BPU, but not to TIBO-R82150. These data argue that these non-nucleoside inhibitors fit differently, even though they share a common binding pocket. Nevirapine was seen to exert inhibitory activity by altering the interaction of the enzyme with the template-primer. Kinetic parameters were modulated by the template (DNA versus RNA) as well as by some of the mutations.