Elsevier

Virology

Volume 281, Issue 2, 15 March 2001, Pages 294-304
Virology

Regular Article
An Infectious Clone of the West Nile Flavivirus

https://doi.org/10.1006/viro.2000.0795Get rights and content
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Abstract

West Nile (WN) virus is the most widespread among flaviviruses, but until recently it was not known on the American continent. We describe here design of a subgenomic replicon, as well as a full-length infectious clone of the lineage II WN strain, which appeared surprisingly stable compared to other flavivirus infectious clones. This infectious clone was used to investigate effects of 5′- and 3′-nonrelated sequences on virus replication and infectivity of synthetic RNA. While a long nonrelated sequence at the 3′-end delayed but did not prevent establishment of the productive infectious cycle, a much shorter extra sequence at the 5′-end completely abrogated virus replication. Replacement of the conserved 5′-adenosine residue substantially delayed, but did not prevent, establishment of virus infection. In all cases, the recovered virus had restored its authentic 5′- and 3′-end genome sequences. However, the presence of extensive nonrelated sequences at both 5′- and 3′-ends could not be repaired.

Keywords

West Nile virus
infectious clone
flavivirus
RNA
replication
genome
end repair
ribozyme
chimeric virus

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