Lenartowicz Elzbieta, Kesy Julita, Ruszkowska Agnieszka, Soszynska-Jozwiak Marta, Michalak Paula, Moss Walter N, Turner Douglas H, Kierzek Ryszard, Kierzek Elzbieta
Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Noskowskiego 12/14, 61-704 Poznan, Poland.
Department of Chemistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, 14627, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Feb 5;11(2):e0148281. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148281. eCollection 2016.
Influenza A is a negative sense RNA virus that kills hundreds of thousands of humans each year. Base pairing in RNA is very favorable, but possibilities for RNA secondary structure of the influenza genomic RNA have not been investigated. This work presents the first experimentally-derived exploration of potential secondary structure in an influenza A naked (protein-free) genomic segment. Favorable folding regions are revealed by in vitro chemical structure mapping, thermodynamics, bioinformatics, and binding to isoenergetic microarrays of an entire natural sequence of the 875 nt segment 8 vRNA and of a smaller fragment. Segment 8 has thermodynamically stable and evolutionarily conserved RNA structure and encodes essential viral proteins NEP and NS1. This suggests that vRNA self-folding may generate helixes and loops that are important at one or more stages of the influenza life cycle.
甲型流感是一种负链RNA病毒，每年导致数十万人死亡。RNA中的碱基配对非常有利，但甲型流感基因组RNA的二级结构可能性尚未得到研究。这项工作首次对甲型流感裸露（无蛋白质）基因组片段中的潜在二级结构进行了实验性探索。通过体外化学结构映射、热力学、生物信息学以及与875个核苷酸的片段8 vRNA的整个天然序列和一个较小片段的等能微阵列的结合，揭示了有利的折叠区域。片段8具有热力学稳定且进化保守的RNA结构，并编码重要的病毒蛋白NEP和NS1。这表明vRNA的自我折叠可能会产生在流感生命周期的一个或多个阶段很重要的螺旋和环。
