Mishra Bibhudutta, Balaji Advait, Beesetti Hemalatha, Swaminathan Sathyamangalam, Aduri Raviprasad
Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, K K Birla Goa Campus, Zuarinagar, South Goa, Goa 403 726 India.
Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Jawahar Nagar, Shameerpet Mandal, Hyderabad, Telangana 500 078 India.
Virusdisease. 2020 Sep;31(3):299-307. doi: 10.1007/s13337-020-00615-w. Epub 2020 Jul 30.
Dengue virus (DENV), the causative agent of dengue fever and severe dengue, exists as four antigenically different serotypes. These serotypes are further classified into genotypes and have varying degrees of pathogenicity. The 5' and 3' ends of the genomic RNA play a critical role in the viral life cycle. A global scale study of the RNA structural variation among the sero- and genotypes was carried out to correlate RNA structure with pathogenicity. We found that the GC rich stem and rigid loop structure of the 5' end of the genomic RNA of DENV 2 differs significantly from the others. The observed variation in base composition and base pairing may confer structural and functional advantage in highly virulent strains. This variation in the structure may influence the ease of cyclization and recruitment of viral RNA polymerase, NS5 RdRp, thereby affecting the pathogenicity of these strains.
登革病毒（DENV）是登革热和重症登革热的病原体，有四种抗原性不同的血清型。这些血清型进一步分为基因型，且具有不同程度的致病性。基因组RNA的5'端和3'端在病毒生命周期中起关键作用。开展了一项关于血清型和基因型之间RNA结构变异的全球规模研究，以关联RNA结构与致病性。我们发现，登革病毒2型基因组RNA 5'端富含GC的茎环结构与其他血清型和基因型显著不同。观察到的碱基组成和碱基配对的变化可能赋予高毒力毒株结构和功能上的优势。这种结构变化可能会影响病毒RNA环化的难易程度以及病毒RNA聚合酶NS5 RdRp的募集，从而影响这些毒株的致病性。
