Roy J. Carver Department of Biophysics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 50011, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jan 10;12(1):310. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03767-x.
Influenza virus is a persistent threat to human health; indeed, the deadliest modern pandemic was in 1918 when an H1N1 virus killed an estimated 50 million people globally. The intent of this work is to better understand influenza from an RNA-centric perspective to provide local, structural motifs with likely significance to the influenza infectious cycle for therapeutic targeting. To accomplish this, we analyzed over four hundred thousand RNA sequences spanning three major clades: influenza A, B and C. We scanned influenza segments for local secondary structure, identified/modeled motifs of likely functionality, and coupled the results to an analysis of evolutionary conservation. We discovered 185 significant regions of predicted ordered stability, yet evidence of sequence covariation was limited to 7 motifs, where 3-found in influenza C-had higher than expected amounts of sequence covariation.
流感病毒是对人类健康的持久威胁；事实上，现代最致命的大流行是 1918 年，当时一种 H1N1 病毒在全球范围内导致约 5000 万人死亡。这项工作的目的是从 RNA 为中心的角度更好地了解流感，为治疗靶点提供可能对流感感染周期有意义的局部结构基序。为此，我们分析了跨越三个主要分支的四十多万个 RNA 序列：甲型、乙型和丙型流感。我们扫描了流感片段的局部二级结构，确定/模拟了可能具有功能的基序，并将结果与进化保守性分析相结合。我们发现了 185 个具有预测有序稳定性的显著区域，但序列共变的证据仅限于 7 个基序，其中丙型流感中的 3 个基序具有高于预期的序列共变。
