Influenza viruses that require 10 genomic segments as antiviral therapeutics.

ABSTRACT: Influenza A viruses (IAVs) encode their genome across eight, negative sense RNA segments. During viral assembly, the failure to package all eight segments, or packaging a mutated segment, renders the resulting virion incompletely infectious. It is known that the accumulation of these defective particles can limit viral disease by interfering with the spread of fully infectious particles. In order to harness this phenomenon therapeutically, we defined which viral packaging signals were amenable to duplication and developed a viral genetic platform which produced replication competent IAVs that require up to two additional artificial genome segments for full infectivity. The modified and artificial genome segments propagated by this approach are capable of acting as "decoy" segments that, wh

SUBMITTER: Harding AT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6881065 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature