WIKIMEDIA, CDC
The Ebola and Marburg viruses, both members of the filovirus family, wreak havoc on host cells with just seven open reading frames (ORFs) encoded by a 19-kilobase RNA genome. But a comprehensive examination of viral messenger RNAs, published yesterday (November 4) in mBio, has uncovered hidden variation in some of the transcripts produced by Ebola and Marburg when they infect animal cells.
Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and their colleagues infected monkey and human cell lines with both viruses, and performed Illumina sequencing on RNA isolated from the cells at different time points after infection.
An analysis of the viral transcripts identified sites where the viral polymerase inserted nucleotides, likely leading to previously undescribed proteins. The ...
