Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Plus-stranded (+)RNA viruses infect all kind of species and cause many serious
diseases in humans, animals and plants, leading to major losses in food production and
representing significant risk to human health and welfare. The least understood aspect of virus -
host interaction is the contribution of the host cells. Due to their small genome sizes, RNA
viruses greatly depend on the co-opted host proteins during replication. In spite of the
significance of host proteins in viral pathogenesis, our current knowledge on host factors coopted
for virus replication is surprisingly incomplete. The relatively slow progress in this area is
mainly due to the lack of tractable virus - host systems. Therefore, development of highly
tractable model systems, such as Tomato bushy stunt tombusvirus (TBSV) and the yeast model
host has promoted rapid and significant progress in our understanding of the roles of host factors
in viral replication.
The PI will use TBSV, which is currently one of the most advanced among viral systems to
progress rapidly in understanding the mechanism of RNA replication and the role of the host
proteins. Indeed, the PI's research, using a systems biology approach, including genome-wide
screens and proteomics approaches, has led to a remarkably extensive data set containing
close to 200 host proteins affecting tombusvirus replication, evolution and pathogenesis.
Moreover, using novel cell-free system with a yeast extract capable of supporting authentic
tombusvirus replication in combination with cell biology approach allows the PI to dissect the
actual functions of the identified host proteins in tombusvirus replication. The PI has shown that
the discoveries made in yeast are also relevant in the native host plant, thus validating the
approach. These advances have put tombusviruses into the forefront of RNA viruses as a
system of choice to further our understanding how RNA viruses "re-program" the infected cells.
The PI's work will likely lead to major new insights into RNA virus replication and viral
pathogenesis. Additional advantage of the similarity of TBSV replicase proteins to proteins of
important pathogens, such as Hepatitis C virus (HCV), dengue virus, West Nile virus and other
Flaviviruses and Pestiviruses. Collectively, the major advances with TBSV allow the PI to
conduct experiments on the roles of host factors that are feasible with TBSV, and will stimulate
development of new approaches for studying RNA replication and host - pathogen interactions
for important human pathogens.
This proposal focuses on a key host factor present in the viral replicase complex, namely
GAPDH (glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase) metabolic protein that binds to the viral
RNA and essential for tombusvirus replication in yeast and in the native host plant. The
proposed work will unravel the multiple functions of GAPDH in the viral replicase. These
studies by the PI will certainly lead to further significant advances on the essential role of the
host in RNA virus replication, evolution and virus-host interaction. Accordingly, GAPDH has
been shown to bind to AU-rich sequences present in various RNA viruses, including hepatitis A
virus (HAV), hepatitis C virus, and human parainfluenza virus type 3.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 2/13/09 → 1/31/12 |
Funding
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $371,960.00
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