Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, 61-704 Poznan, Poland.
Roy J. Carver Department of Biophysics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA.
Viruses. 2022 Feb 4;14(2):322. doi: 10.3390/v14020322.
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the family. Like other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 is enveloped and possesses a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA genome of ~30 kb. Genomic RNA is used as the template for replication and transcription. During these processes, positive-sense genomic RNA (gRNA) and subgenomic RNAs (sgRNAs) are created. Several studies presented the importance of the genomic RNA secondary structure in SARS-CoV-2 replication. However, the structure of sgRNAs has remained largely unsolved so far. In this study, we probed the sgRNA M model of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. The presented model molecule includes 5'UTR and a coding sequence of gene M. This is the first experimentally informed secondary structure model of sgRNA M, which presents features likely to be important in sgRNA M function. The knowledge of sgRNA M structure provides insights to better understand virus biology and could be used for designing new therapeutics.
SARS-CoV-2 属于 科。与其他冠状病毒一样，SARS-CoV-2 有包膜，具有约 30kb 的正链、单链 RNA 基因组。基因组 RNA 可作为复制和转录的模板。在此过程中，会产生正链基因组 RNA（gRNA）和亚基因组 RNA（sgRNA）。有几项研究表明基因组 RNA 二级结构在 SARS-CoV-2 复制中的重要性。然而，sgRNA 的结构至今仍未完全解决。在这项研究中，我们在体外探测了 SARS-CoV-2 的 sgRNA M 模型。所呈现的模型分子包含 5'UTR 和基因 M 的编码序列。这是 sgRNA M 的第一个具有实验依据的二级结构模型，它呈现出可能对 sgRNA M 功能很重要的特征。sgRNA M 结构的知识为更好地了解病毒生物学提供了线索，并可用于设计新的治疗方法。
