Ochsenreiter, R.; Hofacker, I.L.; Wolfinger, M.T. Functional RNA Structures in the 3′UTR of Tick-Borne, Insect-Specific and No-Known-Vector Flaviviruses. Viruses2019, 11, 298.
Ochsenreiter, R.; Hofacker, I.L.; Wolfinger, M.T. Functional RNA Structures in the 3′UTR of Tick-Borne, Insect-Specific and No-Known-Vector Flaviviruses. Viruses 2019, 11, 298.
Ochsenreiter, R.; Hofacker, I.L.; Wolfinger, M.T. Functional RNA Structures in the 3′UTR of Tick-Borne, Insect-Specific and No-Known-Vector Flaviviruses. Viruses2019, 11, 298.
Ochsenreiter, R.; Hofacker, I.L.; Wolfinger, M.T. Functional RNA Structures in the 3′UTR of Tick-Borne, Insect-Specific and No-Known-Vector Flaviviruses. Viruses 2019, 11, 298.
Abstract
Untranslated regions (UTRs) of flaviviruses contain a large number of RNA structural elements involved in mediating the viral life cycle, including cyclisation, replication, and encapsidation. Here we report on a comparative genomics approach to characterize evolutionarily conserved RNAs in the 3'UTR of tick-borne, insect-specific and no-known-vector flaviviruses in silico. Our data support the wide distribution of previously experimentally characterized exoribonuclease resistant RNAs xrRNAs within tick-borne and no-known-vector flaviviruses and provide evidence for the existence of a cascade of duplicated RNA structures within insect-specific flaviviruses. On a broader scale, our findings indicate that viral 3'UTRs represent a flexible scaffold for evolution to come up with novel xrRNAs
Keywords
Flavivirus; non-coding RNA; secondary structure
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Virology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
