Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lago, M
• Rodríguez, José F
• Bandín, I
• Dopazo, C P

Titel

Aquabirnavirus polyploidy: A new strategy to modulate virulence?

Ist Teil von

• Journal of general virology, 2016-05, Vol.97 (5), p.1168-1177

Ort / Verlag

England

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• One of the main research issues regarding the infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV) is its virulence mechanisms. The bases for understanding the molecular virulence determinants of this virus were established over the last decade when it was demonstrated that certain aa domains in the VP2 and VP2-NS inter-region determined the level of virulence of IPNV. However, certain variability was still inexplicable and, therefore, other factors might also have been involved. To this regard, it has recently been demonstrated that the infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV), a virus of a different genus of the same family as IPNV, can package more than 2 dsRNA segments, and that polyploidy may be associated to virulence. In the present report, we analyze the viral fractions obtained after gradient centrifugation to demonstrate that IPNV virions can also package more than 2 segments, thus indicating that polyploidy is a common birnavirus trait. The differential replication ex vivo and virulence in vivo additionally suggest that such a characteristic is involved in the modulation of viral infectivity. However, although the ex vivo results clearly demonstrated that the replication capacity is enhanced as the viral ploidy increases, the in vivo results could not strongly support a direct relationship between ploidy and virulence to the host, thus suggesting that other virulence determinants are also involved.