Development of a Novel Dengue-1 Virus Replicon System Expressing Secretory Gaussia luciferase for Analysis of Viral Replication and Discovery of Antiviral Drugs.

Development of a Novel Dengue-1 Virus Replicon System Expressing Secretory Gaussia luciferase for Analysis of Viral Replication and Discovery of Antiviral Drugs. Jpn J Infect Dis. 2014;67(3):209-12 Authors: Kato F, Kobayashi T, Tajima S, Takasaki T, Miura T, Igarashi T, Hishiki T Abstract Replicon systems have been used for high-throughput screening of anti-dengue virus (anti-DENV) inhibitors and for understanding mechanisms of viral replication. In the present study, we constructed novel DENV-1 replicons encoding Gaussia luciferase that was secreted into the culture medium. Two types of constructs were generated: RNA-based and DNA-based. Each type was translated in an internal ribosome entry site (IRES)-dependent or IRES-independent manner. Among these constructs, the DNA-based replicon employing IRES-dependent translation (DGL2) produced the highest titer. Luciferase levels in the culture medium revealed that the DGL2 replicon was inhibited by ribavirin (a well-known DENV inhibitor) at levels similar to those measured for drug inhibition of multi-round DENV-1 infection. These results indicate that the DNA-based IRES-driven DENV-1 replicon may facilitate studies on viral replication and antiviral compound discovery. PMID: 24858611 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Japanese Journal of Infectious Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Authors: Tags: Jpn J Infect Dis Source Type: research