Sun Minxuan, Liu Xueqin, Cao Shengbo, He Qigai, Zhou Rui, Ye Jing, Li Yaoming, Chen Huanchun
State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Microbiology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, PR China.
Vet Microbiol. 2007 Jul 20;123(1-3):203-9. doi: 10.1016/j.vetmic.2007.03.005. Epub 2007 Mar 14.
Porcine circovirus type 1 (PCV1) and type 2 (PCV2) are two genotypes of porcine circovirus. Both of them are presumed to be widespread in the swine population. Currently, there is no specific treatment for their infections. RNA interference (RNAi) is a sequence-specific RNA degradation mechanism mediated by small interfering RNA (siRNA), which represents a possible therapeutic application for the treatment of viral infections. In this study, three siRNA expression plasmids (pS-RepA, pS-RepB and pS-RepC) were generated to target three different coding regions of the Rep protein (Rep) of PCV. These siRNAs were used to inhibit PCV production in a porcine kidney cell line, PK-15 cells. Our results revealed that Rep gene expression was inhibited by pS-RepA, pS-RepB and pS-RepC to different degrees. Moreover, our study also showed that the production of PCV1 and PCV2 was reduced by these siRNAs. pS-RepC, which targets the middle region of Rep gene, proved to be the most efficient siRNA for inhibition of Rep expression and viral production. Taken together, our data suggest that RNAi could be investigated as a potential treatment for PCV infection.
猪圆环病毒1型（PCV1）和2型（PCV2）是猪圆环病毒的两种基因型。据推测，它们在猪群中广泛存在。目前，针对它们的感染尚无特效治疗方法。RNA干扰（RNAi）是一种由小干扰RNA（siRNA）介导的序列特异性RNA降解机制，这为病毒感染的治疗提供了一种可能的治疗应用。在本研究中，构建了三种siRNA表达质粒（pS-RepA、pS-RepB和pS-RepC），以靶向猪圆环病毒复制蛋白（Rep）的三个不同编码区域。这些siRNA用于抑制猪肾细胞系PK-15细胞中猪圆环病毒的产生。我们的结果显示，pS-RepA、pS-RepB和pS-RepC对Rep基因表达有不同程度的抑制作用。此外，我们的研究还表明，这些siRNA可降低PCV1和PCV2的产生。靶向Rep基因中部区域的pS-RepC被证明是抑制Rep表达和病毒产生最有效的siRNA。综上所述，我们的数据表明RNAi可作为猪圆环病毒感染的一种潜在治疗方法进行研究。
