Journal article

Influenza NA and PB1 Gene Segments Interact during the Formation of Viral Progeny: Localization of the Binding Region within the PB1 Gene

Brad Gilbertson, Tian Zheng, Marie Gerber, Anne Printz-Schweigert, Chi Ong, Roland Marquet, Catherine Isel, Steven Rockman, Lorena Brown

VIRUSES-BASEL | MDPI AG | Published : 2016

Abstract

The influenza A virus genome comprises eight negative-sense viral RNAs (vRNAs) that form individual ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes. In order to incorporate a complete set of each of these vRNAs, the virus uses a selective packaging mechanism that facilitates co-packaging of specific gene segments but whose molecular basis is still not fully understood. Recently, we used a competitive transfection model where plasmids encoding the A/Puerto Rico/8/34 (PR8) and A/Udorn/307/72 (Udorn) PB1 gene segments were competed to show that the Udorn PB1 gene segment is preferentially co-packaged into progeny virions with the Udorn NA gene segment. Here we created chimeric PB1 genes combining both Udorn ..

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