Non-selective Packaging of Rift Valley Fever Virus Genome Segments

Author Summary The bunyavirus family is one of the largest virus families on Earth, of which several members cause severe disease in humans, animals or plants. Little is known about the mechanisms that facilitate the production of infectious bunyavirus virions, which should contain at least one copy of the small (S), medium (M) and large (L) genome segment. In this study, we investigated the genome packaging process of the Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) by visualizing individual genome segments inside infected cells and virions. Experiments performed with wild-type virus, two- and four-segmented variants, and a variant with a codon-shuffled M segment showed that the production of infectious virions is a non-selective process and is unlikely to involve the formation of a supramolecular viral RNA complex. These observations have broad implications for understanding the bunyavirus replication cycle and may facilitate the development of new vaccines and the identification of novel antiviral targets.Ed Rybicki’s insight:So: pretty much random, then? Interesting!See it on Scoop.it, via Virology and Bioinformatics from Virology.ca
Non-selective Packaging of Rift Valley Fever Virus Genome Segments
Source: Viral Bioinformatics