The influence of viral RNA secondary structure on interactions with innate host cell defences.

ABSTRACT: RNA viruses infecting vertebrates differ fundamentally in their ability to establish persistent infections with markedly different patterns of transmission, disease mechanisms and evolutionary relationships with their hosts. Although interactions with host innate and adaptive responses are complex and persistence mechanisms likely multi-factorial, we previously observed associations between bioinformatically predicted RNA secondary formation in genomes of positive-stranded RNA viruses with their in vivo fitness and persistence. To analyse this interactions functionally, we transfected fibroblasts with non-replicating, non-translated RNA transcripts from RNA viral genomes with differing degrees of genome-scale ordered RNA structure (GORS). Single-stranded RNA transcripts induced interferon-

SUBMITTER: Witteveldt J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3950689 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature