Borodavka, A, Ault, J, Stockley, PG et al. (1 more author) (2015) Evidence that avian reovirus σNS is an RNA chaperone: implications for genome segment assortment. Nucleic acids research. ISSN 0305-1048
Abstract
Reoviruses are important human, animal and plant pathogens having 10-12 segments of double-stranded genomic RNA. The mechanisms controlling the assortment and packaging of genomic segments in these viruses, remain poorly understood. RNA-protein and RNA-RNA interactions between viral genomic segment precursors have been implicated in the process. While non-structural viral RNA-binding proteins, such as avian reovirus σNS, are essential for virus replication, the mechanism by which they assist packaging is unclear. Here we demonstrate that σNS assembles into stable elongated hexamers in vitro, which bind single-stranded nucleic acids with high affinity, but little sequence specificity. Using ensemble and single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, we show that σNS also binds to a partially double-stranded RNA, resulting in gradual helix unwinding. The hexamer can bind multiple RNA molecules and exhibits strand-annealing activity, thus mediating conversion of metastable, intramolecular stem-loops into more stable heteroduplexes. We demonstrate that the ARV σNS acts as an RNA chaperone facilitating specific RNA-RNA interactions between genomic precursors during segment assortment and packaging.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Wellcome Trust 103068/Z/13/Z Wellcome Trust 089310/Z/09/Z |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Aug 2015 11:45 |
Last Modified: | 26 Feb 2019 09:30 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkv639 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/nar/gkv639 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:88852 |