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Host-Acquired Virus Genes Support An Ancient Antiviral Role Of The Pirna Pathway In Dipterans, Rebecca Christian
Host-Acquired Virus Genes Support An Ancient Antiviral Role Of The Pirna Pathway In Dipterans, Rebecca Christian
Theses and Dissertations
Endogenous viral elements (EVEs) have been recently investigated as a source of transgenerational immune memory. These “viral fossils” are abundant in Aedes mosquitoes and partner with the host’s primary antiviral defense system, the RNA interference (RNAi) pathways. This partnership appears unique to mosquitoes, which encode an expansion of the Piwi endoribonucleases. To interrogate EVE-Piwi partnerships and their role in antiviral defense, I performed a comparative small RNA analysis of two naturally occurring EVE-virus pairs – one in the mosquito Aedes albopictus, and one in the midge Chaoborus americanus. Both express an EVE related to the nucleoprotein of their …