Insights from structural studies of the cardiovirus 2A protein

Neva Caliskan, Chris H Hill

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Cardioviruses are single-stranded RNA viruses of the family Picornaviridae. In addition to being the first example of internal ribosome entry site (IRES) utilization, cardioviruses also employ a series of alternative translation strategies, such as Stop-Go translation and programmed ribosome frameshifting. Here, we focus on cardiovirus 2A protein, which is not only a primary virulence factor, but also exerts crucial regulatory functions during translation, including activation of viral ribosome frameshifting and inhibition of host cap-dependent translation. Only recently, biochemical and structural studies have allowed us to close the gaps in our knowledge of how cardiovirus 2A is able to act in diverse translation-related processes as a novel RNA-binding protein. This review will summarize these findings, which ultimately may lead to the discovery of other RNA-mediated gene expression strategies across a broad range of RNA viruses.

Original languageEnglish
Article numberBSR20210406
Number of pages12
JournalBioscience Reports
Volume42
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

© 2022 The Author(s).

Keywords

  • Cardiovirus/genetics
  • Internal Ribosome Entry Sites/genetics
  • Viral Proteins/genetics

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