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. 1991 Oct;65(10):5605–5608. doi: 10.1128/jvi.65.10.5605-5608.1991

Mouse hepatitis virus S RNA sequence reveals that nonstructural proteins ns4 and ns5a are not essential for murine coronavirus replication.

K Yokomori 1, M M Lai 1
PMCID: PMC249076  PMID: 1654456

Abstract

Genes 4 and 5 of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) are known to encode nonstructural proteins ns4, ns5a, and ns5b, whose function is unknown. In this study, we demonstrated that one of the MHV strains, MHV-S, did not synthesize mRNA 4 and made a smaller mRNA 5. Sequence analysis showed that the transcription initiation site for gene 4 of MHV-S was mutated from the consensus UCUAAAC to UUUAAAC, consistent with the idea that mutations in this region abolish mRNA synthesis. Furthermore, within gene 5 there were deletions totaling 307 nucleotides which deleted almost all of open reading frame 5a, but preserved open reading frame 5b of gene 5. Comparison of the growth of MHV-S with other MHV strains in DBT cells revealed no significant growth defect in MHV-S. These results suggest that ns4 and ns5a are not essential for viral replication in tissue culture cells, and thus join gene 2 and the hemagglutinin-esterase (HE) gene as nonessential viral genes in MHV.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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