Potential of avian and mammalian species A rotaviruses to reassort as explored by plasmid only-based reverse genetics.

Potential of avian and mammalian species A rotaviruses to reassort as explored by plasmid only-based reverse genetics. Virus Res. 2020 May 19;:198027 Authors: Patzina-Mehling C, Falkenhagen A, Trojnar E, Gadicherla AK, Johne R Abstract Species A rotavirus (RVA) is an important gastrointestinal pathogen that is widely distributed in humans, mammalian animals and birds. The RVA genome consists of eleven double-stranded RNA segments, enabling the generation of novel strains with new pathogenic or antigenic features by genetic reassortment. While reassortants between human and mammalian animal RVAs have been repeatedly described, data on the reassortment potential of avian RVA strains are rare. To investigate genome segment exchanges between avian and mammalian RVA strains, a plasmid-based reverse genetics strategy originally developed for the simian RVA strain SA11 was used here. All eleven genome segments of the chicken RVA strain 02V0002G3 were cloned into similar plasmids as in the SA11 system. However, in contrast to SA11, no infectious virus could be generated by transfection of the eleven 02V0002G3 plasmids into cell culture under the same conditions. In another series of experiments, each of the genome segments of 02V0002G3 was transfected together with the remaining ten genome segments of SA11. Viable mono-reassortants were only retrieved for the avian VP3 and VP4 genes. The reassortant viruses were structurally indistinguishabl...
Source: Virus Research - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Virus Res Source Type: research