Influenza A virus utilizes noncanonical cap-snatching to diversify its mRNA/ncRNA.

ABSTRACT: Influenza A virus (IAV) utilizes cap-snatching to obtain host capped small RNAs for priming viral mRNA synthesis, generating capped hybrid mRNAs for translation. Previous studies have been focusing on canonical cap-snatching, which occurs at the very 5' end of viral mRNAs. Here we discovered noncanonical cap-snatching, which generates capped hybrid mRNAs/noncoding RNAs mapped to the region ∼300 nucleotides (nt) upstream of each mRNA 3' end, and to the 5' region, primarily starting at the second nt, of each virion RNAs (vRNA). Like canonical cap-snatching, noncanonical cap-snatching utilizes a base-pairing between the last nt G of host capped RNAs and a nt C of template RNAs to prime RNA synthesis. However, the nt upstream of this template C is usually A/U rather than just U; prime-realignm

SUBMITTER: Li L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7430677 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature