Figure 1.

Diagrams of virus constructs used in this study (not drawn to scale). (A) 5′dsMRE16ic was used as the starting backbone for the other viruses and does not contain any inserted sequences in the duplicated subgenomic promotor region or the structural ORF. Arrows indicate subgenomic promoter transcription start sites. (B) MRE/rprORF and MRE/control contain sequences inserted after the final codon of the capsid sequence in the structural ORF. In both constructs, the first nine nucleotides of PE3 are duplicated following the capsid to allow autoproteolytic activity of the capsid. Immediately following the PE3 insertion, MRE/rprORF contains a ubiquitin-reaper fusion with an HA tag. MRE/control contains ubiquitin and HA but does not contain reaper. The inserted sequence of both constructs ends with FDMV 2A which will release peptides as they are translated. (C) MRE/rpr contains the reaper gene inserted in the duplicated subgenomic promoter region. The figure was created with Biorender.com.