Author : Salvatore F. Priore
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 156 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (844 download)
Book Synopsis Discovery and Characterization of Influenza Virus RNA Secondary Structures by : Salvatore F. Priore
Download or read book Discovery and Characterization of Influenza Virus RNA Secondary Structures written by Salvatore F. Priore and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "PART I: Influenza virus is a significant public health threat, partially because of its capacity to readily exchange gene segments between different host species to form novel pandemic strains. Even though influenza virus uses RNA exclusively throughout its entire life cycle, little is known about the structure of the Influenza A genome and transcriptome. This works presents bioinformatics efforts to discover and characterize RNA secondary structures in both the (+) and ( - )RNA orientations of influenza A virus. All available unique influenza A sequences from the NCBI database were used to identify 20 likely structured regions, primarily in the (+)RNA. One of these predictions is verified and refined using small molecule mapping and isoenergetic microarrays for a conserved region of the Segment 8 (NS1/NEP) intron. Part II: In addition to locally conserved structure, this work examines the global RNA secondary structure in coding regions of both Influenza A and B. For Influenza A, segments 1, 5, 7 and 8 show evidence of wide-spread structure conservation. This phenomenon is referred to as Global Ordered RNA Structure, or GORS. On average the predicted thermodynamic stability of each coding region segregated based on the host species with avian having the most stable folding free energies followed by swine and then human. Similarly, a study of Influenza B virus, which infects primarily humans, showed GORS in Segments 1, 2, 5 and 8. In silico codon mutations that maintained the amino acid sequence for each segment demonstrate the relatively unstable folding free energies of influenza B coding regions. Together these results highlight some of the molecular similarities and differences between influenza A and B and demonstrate the evolutionary adaptation of Influenza"--Page ix.