Developement of Reverse Genetics for Ibaraki Virus to reveal its replication mechanisms

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24780285
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Basic veterinary science/Basic zootechnical science
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: MATSUO Eiko 神戸大学, (連合)農学研究科(研究院), 助教 (40620878)
• Research Collaborator: ROY Polly London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine(United Kingdom), 教授
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 遺伝子改変法 / イバラキウイルス / VP6 / 複製機構

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Ibaraki virus (IBAV) is a strain of the epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus (EHDV) serogroup, which belongs to the Orbivirus genus of the Reoviridae family. Reverse genetics (RG) system is one of the strong tools to understand molecular mechanisms of virus replication. Here, we developed a RG system for IBAV to identify a nonessential region of a minor structural protein, VP6, by generating VP6-truncated IBAV. Interestingly, the nonessential region of VP6 is sheared in orbiviruses. In addition, several tags were inserted into the truncated region of IBAV VP6 to produce viable VP6-tagged IBAV. We demonstrated that tagged-VP6 proteins were first assembled into puncta in cells infected with VP6-tagged IBAV. Further, as it is believed that orbivirus VP6 is likely to be important for genome packaging, we tried to clarify how orbivirus VP6 could recruit virus genome into the particle by using several orbivirus RG systems.

Free Research Field

分子ウイルス学