Closing in on the causes of host shutoff

Ian Mohr

doi:10.7554/elife.20755

Abstract

Influenza A virus suppresses the translation of host mRNA by selectively remodeling and dominating the pool of mRNA in infected cells.

Highlights

Many viruses impair the translation of cellular messenger RNA (mRNA), via a process termed “host shutoff”, in order to prevent the production of anti-viral, host defense proteins
Other mechanisms put forward include the preferential translation of viral mRNA (Park and Katze, 1995), the degradation of cellular mRNA (Beloso et al, 1992), inhibiting the formation of cellular pre-mRNA (Nemeroff et al, 1998), the degradation of cellular RNA polymerase II (Rodriguez et al, 2007), and the retention of host mRNA in the cell nucleus (Fortes et al, 1994)
In eLife, Noam Stern-Ginossar of the Weizmann Institute of Science and colleagues – including Adi Bercovich-Kinori and Julie Tai as joint first authors – report how they have combined RNA sequencing with ribosome profiling (which gives a measure of mRNA translation or protein synthesis (Ingolia, 2016)) to produce a genome-wide map that illustrates changes in the abundance and translation of both host and viral mRNA across the influenza A virus (IAV) replication cycle (Bercovich-Kinori et al, 2016)

Summary

Introduction

The virus relies on the ribosomes in the host cell to translate viral messenger RNA (mRNA) into polypeptides. The mechanisms responsible for host shutoff in viruses that have mRNAs with m7G-caps, such as influenza A virus, have remained enigmatic.

Results

Conclusion