Virology Commons^™

Influenza A Virus Genomic Reassortment And Packaging, Graham Devin Williams

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Influenza A viruses (IAV) are a major human and environmental pathogen. IAV successfully infects a diverse host range and adaptation of new viral strains to humans may cause pandemic events with high morbidity and mortality. As a member of the Orthomyxoviridae family, IAV inherently possesses a segmented genome, which enables a process of segment transmission between viruses following cellular co-infection, a process termed reassortment. The high rate of IAV mutation and continued co-circulation of diverse viral strains in divergent host species leads to the persistent prospect for emergence of new IAV with pandemic potential. Therefore, it is of great importance …

Expansion Of Microbial Virology By Impetus Of The Reduction Of Viral Dark Matter, Siddharth Ravindran Krishnamurthy

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Modern metagenomic methods have rapidly accelerated the rate of viral discovery. Currently, to discover a novel virus, deep sequencing reads must align to a known reference virus. While alignment is effective at identifying closely related viruses, highly divergent viruses can often share no discernable sequence alignment with known viruses. Therefore, the accurate classification of viral dark matter – metagenomic sequences that originate from viruses but do not align to any reference virus sequences – is one of the major obstacles in not only discovering novel viruses, but also by extension, comprehensively defining the virome. As viral dark matter results fundamentally …

Identification And Characterization Of An Interferon Stimulated Gene That Restricts Alphavirus Infection And Pathogenesis, Subhajit Poddar

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Viral infection of host cells induces the Type I interferon (IFN) response, which is

characterized by the production of hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs). Altogether, these

ISGs function to induce an antiviral state, hindering or blocking various steps of the viral

lifecycle. Many individual ISGs have potent and broad antiviral functions. However elimination

of a single ISG does not completely abrogate protection, suggesting that other ISGs, although

moderate or moderate when considered alone, must work cooperatively to provide optimal

antiviral activity.

In order to identify and characterize novel ISGs, an attenuated strain of the alphavirus

chikungunya (CHIKV-181/25) was tested against …

Antiviral Nucleoside Inhibitors Of Leishmania Rna Virus 1: Discovery And Mechanism, John Isaac Robinson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Some Leishmania parasites in the Viannia sub-genus are persistently infected with Leishmania RNA virus 1 (LRV1), a single-segmented double-stranded RNA virus belonging to the family Totiviridae. Infected parasites cause greater pathology and reach higher populations in mouse models of Leishmania infection. In human disease, LRV1+ parasites are correlated with increased frequency of treatment failure and relapse. Efficient methods to detect LRV1 and eliminate it from parasites are required to better understand the role of LRV1 in Leishmania infection. We optimized multiple techniques to measure LRV1 levels in parasites, most notably using flow cytometry to measure the amount of viral capsid …

The Role Of Rna Interference In The Control Of Leishmania Rna Virus 1 Infection, Erin Acino Brettmann

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The presence of Leishmania RNA virus 1 (LRV1) in parasites of the Leishmania (Viannia) subgenus increases the virulence of the parasite in mouse models of leishmaniasis and is correlated with treatment failure, relapse, and the development of mucocutaneous disease in humans. LRV1 is not shed or infectious; rather, the infection is persistent, and as yet it is unknown how the parasite controls virus levels. Many eukaryotic organisms use RNA interference (RNAi) to limit virus replication, and Leishmania (Viannia) parasites have an active RNAi pathway. To determine whether Leishmania are capable of using RNAi to control LRV1, we sequenced sRNAs from …