Grey Finn, Antoniewicz Andy, Allen Edwards, Saugstad Julie, McShea Andy, Carrington James C, Nelson Jay
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR 97201, USA.
J Virol. 2005 Sep;79(18):12095-9. doi: 10.1128/JVI.79.18.12095-12099.2005.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an extensive class of noncoding genes that regulate gene expression through posttranscriptional repression. Given the potential for large viral genomes to encode these transcripts, we examined the human cytomegalovirus AD169 genome for miRNAs using a bioinformatics approach. We identified 406 potential stem-loops, of which 110 were conserved between chimpanzee cytomegalovirus and several strains of human cytomegalovirus. Of these conserved stem-loops, 13 exhibited a significant score using the MiRscan algorithm. Examination of total RNA from human cytomegalovirus-infected cells demonstrated that 5 of the 13 predicted miRNAs were expressed during infection. These studies demonstrate that human cytomegalovirus encodes multiple conserved miRNAs and suggest that human cytomegalovirus may utilize an miRNA strategy to regulate cellular and viral gene function.
微小RNA（miRNA）是一类广泛的非编码基因，通过转录后抑制来调控基因表达。鉴于大型病毒基因组有编码这些转录本的可能性，我们采用生物信息学方法在人巨细胞病毒AD169基因组中检测miRNA。我们鉴定出406个潜在的茎环结构，其中110个在黑猩猩巨细胞病毒和几株人巨细胞病毒之间保守。在这些保守的茎环结构中，有13个使用MiRscan算法显示出显著评分。对人巨细胞病毒感染细胞的总RNA检测表明，预测的13个miRNA中有5个在感染期间表达。这些研究表明人巨细胞病毒编码多个保守的miRNA，并提示人巨细胞病毒可能利用miRNA策略来调控细胞和病毒基因功能。
