Concurrent micro-RNA mediated silencing of tick-borne flavivirus replication in tick vector and in the brain of vertebrate host.

ABSTRACT: Tick-borne viruses include medically important zoonotic pathogens that can cause life-threatening diseases. Unlike mosquito-borne viruses, whose impact can be restrained via mosquito population control programs, for tick-borne viruses only vaccination remains the reliable means of disease prevention. For live vaccine viruses a concern exists, that spillovers from viremic vaccinees could result in introduction of genetically modified viruses into sustainable tick-vertebrate host transmission cycle in nature. To restrict tick-borne flavivirus (Langat virus, LGTV) vector tropism, we inserted target sequences for tick-specific microRNAs (mir-1, mir-275 and mir-279) individually or in combination into several distant regions of LGTV genome. This caused selective attenuation of viral replication

SUBMITTER: Tsetsarkin KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5020608 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature