Functional and Structural Features of Viral RNA Elements
A special issue of Viruses (ISSN 1999-4915). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Viruses".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 2244
Special Issue Editor
Interests: parvoviruses; interaction of viral regulatory proteins with host proteins; viral vectors; gene therapy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The outcome of viral infections including evasion from the immune system and pathogenicity can be regulated by multiple post-transcriptional mechanisms such as splicing, mRNA stability, mRNA export, translation initiation and mRNA modification or editing. The corresponding viral RNA sequences must therefore provide the structural and sequence determinants required for this process. Well-characterized examples are the internal ribosome entry site (IRES), for cap-independent protein translation first identified in Picornaviruses, or the RRE element required for the efficient export of HIV mRNAs. Such sequence elements may be involved in interactions with proteins or other RNA molecules or in intramolecular interactions between different parts of the regulatory sequence. They are often subject to evolutionary selection pressure to maximize functionality without expanding the viral genome size.
The current Special Issue addresses recent advances in unraveling the structural motifs contributing to the functionality of such viral cis-regulatory RNA sequences and the molecular mechanisms and host factors involved their mode of action. It further aims at a better understanding of the evolution of these regulatory elements for facilitating the prediction of sequences with similar functions in other viral genomes.
Dr. Stefan Weger
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- RNA viruses
- IRES elements
- cap-independent protein synthesis
- translation initiation
- conserved RNA motifs
