Viruses, Vol. 11, Pages 152: Interferon Regulatory Factor 3-Mediated Signaling Limits Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Coronavirus Propagation in Cells from an Insectivorous Bat

Viruses, Vol. 11, Pages 152: Interferon Regulatory Factor 3-Mediated Signaling Limits Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Coronavirus Propagation in Cells from an Insectivorous Bat Viruses doi: 10.3390/v11020152 Authors: Arinjay Banerjee Darryl Falzarano Noreen Rapin Jocelyne Lew Vikram Misra Insectivorous bats are speculated to be ancestral hosts of Middle-East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus (CoV). MERS-CoV causes disease in humans with thirty-five percent fatality, and has evolved proteins that counteract human antiviral responses. Since bats experimentally infected with MERS-CoV do not develop signs of disease, we tested the hypothesis that MERS-CoV would replicate less efficiently in bat cells than in human cells because of its inability to subvert antiviral responses in bat cells. We infected human and bat (Eptesicus fuscus) cells with MERS-CoV and observed that the virus grew to higher titers in human cells. MERS-CoV also effectively suppressed the antiviral interferon beta (IFNβ) response in human cells, unlike in bat cells. To determine if IRF3, a critical mediator of the interferon response, also regulated the response in bats, we examined the response of IRF3 to poly(I:C), a synthetic analogue of viral double-stranded RNA. We observed that bat IRF3 responded to poly(I:C) by nuclear translocation and post-translational modifications, hallmarks of IRF3 activation. Suppression of IRF3 by small-interfering RNA (siRNA) demonstrat...
Source: Viruses - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research