Abstract
The smallest arenaviral protein is the zinc-finger protein (Z) that belongs to the RING finger protein family. Z serves as a main component required for virus budding from the membrane of the infected cells through self-oligomerization, a process that can be aided by the viral nucleoprotein (NP) to form the viral matrix of progeny virus particles. Z has also been shown to be essential for mediating viral transcriptional repression activity by locking the L polymerase onto the viral promoter in a catalytically inactive state, thus limiting viral replication. The Z protein has also recently been shown to inhibit the type I interferon-induction pathway by directly binding to the intracellular pathogen-sensor proteins RIG-I and MDA5, and thus inhibiting their normal functions. This chapter describes several assays used to examine the important roles of the arenaviral Z protein in mediating virus budding (i.e., either Z self-budding or NP-Z budding activities), viral transcriptional inhibition in a viral minigenome (MG) assay, and type I IFN suppression in an IFN-β promoter-mediated luciferase reporter assay.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the NIAID/NIH through the new-direction awards mechanism of the SERCEB grant (U54-AI057157) to Y.L. and H.L., by the NIAID/NIH R01 AI083409 to Y.L., and R01 AI093580 and R56 AI091805 to H.L.
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Shao, J., Liang, Y., Ly, H. (2018). Roles of Arenavirus Z Protein in Mediating Virion Budding, Viral Transcription-Inhibition and Interferon-Beta Suppression. In: Salvato, M. (eds) Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1604. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6981-4_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6981-4_16
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