Substitution of glycine with glutamic acid at position 48 of the human immunodeficiency virus protease resulted in an enzyme with reduced activity on one of the protease processing sites in the viral Pol polyprotein precursor. Cleavage at this site was restored by a second-site substitution in the substrate replacing an aspartic acid with either glycine or asparagine. These results suggest that the glutamic acid side chain in the mutant protease has an unfavorable charge-charge interaction with this position in the substrate. Cleavage of a processing site in the viral Gag polyprotein precursor with the mutant enzyme was enhanced, and this enhancement was dependent on the presence of an arginine residue in the substrate, again suggesting a charge-charge interaction. The potential for such interactions was confirmed using molecular modeling. The effect of the position 48 substitution was attributed to a 10-fold increase in Km for the processing site in Pol. These results indicate that the addition of a side chain at position 48 can alter the specificity of the HIV-1 protease to substrate in a sequence specific manner and that compensatory changes can be made in the substrate.