Sanchez David Jesse, Miranda Daniel, Arumugaswami Vaithilingaraja, Hwang Seungmin, Singer Adam E, Senaati Ashkon, Shahangian Arash, Song Moon Jung, Sun Ren, Cheng Genhong
Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
J Virol. 2008 Mar;82(5):2208-17. doi: 10.1128/JVI.01718-07. Epub 2007 Dec 12.
Innate immune responses against viral infection, especially the induction of type I interferon, are critical for limiting the replication of the virus. Although it has been shown that DNA can induce type I interferon, to date no natural DNA ligand of a virus that induces type I interferon has been described. Here we screened the genome of murine gammaherpesvirus 68 with mutations at various genomic locations to map the region of DNA that induces type I interferon. A repetitive region termed the 100-base-pair repeat region is a ligand that is both necessary and sufficient for the viral genomic DNA to induce type I interferon. A region colinear with this ligand in the genome of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus also induces type I interferon. We have thus defined a repetitive region of the genomes of gammaherpesviruses as the first natural DNA virus ligand that induces type I interferon.