Flavivirus replication breakthrough
Flaviviruses cause several debilitating and often fatal diseases including hepatitis, West Nile disease and dengue. It's estimated that more than 50 million cases of the potentially fatal dengue occur in humans annually, mainly in tropical and subtropical climes. The molecular biology of the flaviviruses (positive-strand RNA viruses) is poorly understood, which has hampered the development of antivirals and vaccines for flaviviral diseases. Researchers, led by Andrea Garmanik, have just reported a breakthrough in understanding how the dengue virus replicates. The viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase specifically recognizes a stem-loop structural feature of the viral RNA from the mass of host cell RNAs. This stem-loop is brought close to the initation site for RNA replication by circularization of the genome. The team hope that these insights into dengue virus replication will lay the groundwork for the effective design of antiviral drugs. Genes Dev.
