The cap snatching of segmented negative sense rna viruses as a tool to map the transcription start sites of heterologous co-infecting viruses

Identification of the transcription start sites (TSSs) of a virus is of great importance to understand and dissect the mechanism of viral genome transcription but this often requires costly and laborious experiments. Many segmented negative-sense RNA viruses (sNSVs) cleave capped leader sequences from a large variety of mRNAs and use these cleaved leaders as primers for transcription in a conserved process called cap snatching. The recent developments in high-throughput sequencing have made it possible to determine most, if not all, of the capped RNAs snatched by a sNSV. Here, we show that rice stripe tenuivirus (RSV), a plant-infecting sNSV, co-infects Nicotiana benthamiana with two different begomoviruses and snatches capped leader sequences from their mRNAs. By determining the 5' termini of a single RSV mRNA with high-throughput sequencing, the 5' ends of almost all the mRNAs of the co-infecting begomoviruses could be identified and mapped on their genomes. The findings in this study provide support for the using of the cap snatching of sNSVs as a tool to map viral TSSs.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Lin, Wenzhong, Qiu, Ping, Jin, Jing, Liu, Shunmin, Islam, Saif Ul, Yang, Jinguang, Zhang, Jie, Kormelink, Richard, Du, Zhenguo, Wu, Zujian
Format:	Article/Letter to editor biblioteca
Language:	English
Subjects:	Cap-snatching, Co-infection, Geminivirus, Rice stripe virus, SNSV, TSS, Tenuivirus,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/the-cap-snatching-of-segmented-negative-sense-rna-viruses-as-a-to
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