Studying the role of viral-host RNA interactions during Zika infection

Abstract

Zika infection is a prevalent issue in the current world and has caused worrying symptoms, especially in fetus and newborns. ZIKV RNA is approximately 11kb long which encodes for a single polypeptide. This polypeptide is subsequently cleaved and modified to form 10 viral proteins which are vital for Zika growth and replication. Based on previous structure mapping and interactome mapping data we performed, it was found that ZIKV RNA interacts mostly with miRNAs, non-coding RNA and snoRNAs. In this project, we studied the interactions between ZIKV and some of its interaction partners, miRNA19a-3p, DYNLT1, 7SK and SCARNA2. miRNA19a-3p, 7SK and SCARNA2 exhibited positive effect on ZIKV growth while DYNLT1 inhibited ZIKV growth. Overexpression of DYNLT1 were done to evaluate the inhibitive effect of 3’ UTR and it was found that there was presence of other unknown factors that inhibited ZIKV growth in the absence of 3’ UTR. Understanding the viral-host interactions between the ZIKV RNA and the host cell RNA will help to innovate new drug therapy for Zika infection and provide new insights on ZIKV pathogenicity.