Please read Dr. Te Velthuis’ article in RNA titled, “Quantification of influenza virus mini viral RNA dynamics using Cas13.“
Influenza A viruses (IAV) cause a mild to severe respiratory disease in humans, depending on the viral strain and activation of the innate immune response. Upon infection, IAV releases eight segments of negative-sense, single-stranded RNA that are organized into viral nucleoprotein (vRNP) complexes. Each vRNP complex consists of a viral RNA (vRNA) that is bound by a helical coil of nucleoproteins (NP) and a copy of the RNA-dependent viral RNA polymerase. During replication, the IAV RNA polymerase can produce a wide variety of aberrant RNA products including defective viral genomes (DVG) and mini viral RNAs (mvRNA), which contain the conserved termini of the viral genome segments but lack internal sequences. It is currently assumed that the internal deletions are the result of an intramolecular copy-choice recombination event that involves pausing of the RNA polymerase at an unknown signal and realignment of the nascent RNA to a complementary sequence downstream. Deletion of an internal sequence, results in the formation of a unique junction sequence relative to the full-length viral genome. To read the full article.
Quantification of influenza virus mini viral RNA dynamics using Cas13. Lamb CH, Pitré EM, Elshina E, Rigby CV, Bisht K, Oade MS, Jalal H, Myhrvold C, Te Velthuis AJW. 2024 Dec 16;31(1):126-138. PMID: 39419543 PMCID: PMC11648933 DOI: 10.1261/rna.080174.124