Recent progress of the mechanisms for RNA viruses to block the recognition of dsRNA with RIG-I-like receptors / 病毒学报

RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs) belong to pattern recognition receptors, which perform significant roles in antiviral responses. RLRs can initiate a cascade of signaling transduction that induces the production of type I interferon and activates the interferon signaling pathway, ultimately resulting in antiviral responses. In the course of evolution, viruses have been constantly counteracting host immune systems to facilitate their own survival and replication, and have developed a set of antagonistic strategies. These mainly comprise elusion, disguise and attack strategies to eliminate the activation of RLRs. In virus-infected cells, RLRs recognize viral RNA and then induce antiviral responses. A better understanding of viral antagonistic strategies against RLRs will provide insights into the development of new antiviral medicines. This mini-review concludes that there are three main antagonistic strategies by which RNA viruses can counteract the activation of the RLRs pathway. It aims to provide references and insights for similar studies on viral antagonism in an array of RNA viruses.

Recent progress in interferon induced protein GBP1 research / 病毒学报

Guanylate-binding protein 1 (GBP1) is an interferon induced protein, that belongs to the guany late-binding protein family. GBP1 is widely involved in anti-infection immune responses, anti-tumor activity and various biological reactions. Recent studies have proved that IFN-alpha, IFN-beta, IFN-gamma, IL1alpha, IL1beta, TNF-alpha and LPS can induce GBP1 expression; hence, the diverse biological functions of GBP1 have been gradually deduced and exploited. Many studies have been performed over recent years to understand the exact mechanisms that underlie the anti-infection and anti-tumor properties of GBP1. This review describes the molecular structure, biological activity, anti-infective properties and other functions of GBP1, in order to provide insights into the divergent roles of GBP1 in the regulation of various biological processes.

Advances in reverse genetics-based vaccines of foot and mouth disease / 病毒学报

Reverse-genetic engineering of foot and mouth disease virus (FMDV) can improve the productivity, antigen matching, antigen stability, immune response ability, and biological safety of vaccines, so vaccine candidates with anticipated biological characteristics can be promptly achieved. Negative influence in taming of virulent strains can also be decreased or avoided. Reverse genetics not only make up for deficiencies like limitation of viral nature, low success rate, and time and energy consuming, but also realize more active designing of vaccines. Therefore, reverse genetics is significant in improving integral quality and efficiency of vaccines. In this review, we use FMDV vaccines as an example to summarize improvement in biological characteristics of virulent strains and provide a reference for related researches.

Eukaryonization of T7 RNA polymerase prokaryotic expression system and development of its couple expression system / 生物工程学报

To make transcription of the target gene be driven by T7 RNA polymerase (T7 RNAP) in the eukaryotic cells, and the transcripts be CAP-independent translated. Firstly, the T7 RNAP was introduced into eukaryotic cells by two methods: (1) the BHK-21 cells were contransfected by the plasmid expressing T7 RNAP and pIERS-EGFP-ET vector; (2) by transfection of the cell line stably expressing T7 RNAP. The internal ribosome entry site (IRES) element from FMDV was cloned into the downstream of the T7 promoter sequence of the prokaryotic expressing vector pET-40a-c (+), resulted in the plasmid would express the transcripts carrying the IERS element at its 5' end. The enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) gene was cloned into the downstream of the IERS element, resulted in plasmid pIERS-EGFP-ET. Then, the two kinds of cells expressing T7 RANP were transfected by pIERS-EGFP-ET. The green fluorescence in the transfected cells was observed under a fluorescence microscope equipped with a video documentation system. And the expressional efficiency was analyzed with flow cytometry (FCM). The results show that the IRES element from FMDV has the role of initiating CAP-independent translation, and lay foundation for researching function of the element and interrelated proteins. It would be potential for expressing target gene by the T7 RNAP couple expression system.

Construction and sequencing of full-length cDNA clone of swine vesicular disease virus strain HK'1/70 / 病毒学报

By RACE, 2 overlapping cDNA fragments (3'PCR and 5'PCR fragments) covering the full genome of swine vesicular disease virus strain HK'1/70 were amplified from total RNA extracted from experimentally infected suckling mice. These fragments were cloned into pGEM-T Easy vector, respectively. 5'PCR fragment was digested by enzymes of Aat II and BssH II, and the Aat II-BssH II-digested 5'PCR fragment was obtained and cloned into the recombinant pGEM-T Easy vector containing 3'PCR fragment,the recombinant plasmid encoding full-length cDNA of SVDV HK'I/70 strain was then obtained and sequenced. The results showed that the complete genome of HK'1/70 was 7401 nucleotides (nts) long (excluding the poly (A) tract) which encodes a single polyprotein of 2185 amino acids, a 5'u ntranslating region (UTR) of 743 nts, a 3'UTR of 102 nts and a poly (A) tail at least 74 adenines. T' promoter was added at the 5'e nd of the full-length cDNA and an additional Pspl406I restriction site was added at the 3'e nd of poly (A) tail. The nucleotide and amino acid sequences were compared and phylogenetic analysis was used to examine the evolutionary relationships. The results showed that HK'1 /70 belonged to the second antigenic group. SVD virus was antigenically closely related to Coxsackie B5 virus, and located on the branches of CB5 evolutionary tree. Successful construction of full-length cDNA clone of SVDV HK'1/70 strain lays foundation for rescuing SVDV effectively and enables further research of SVDV on molecular level.