Project description:Borna disease virus (BDV) is a highly neurotropic negative-strand RNA virus that belongs to the Mononegavirales. Many reports demonstrated that natural infection of BDV occurs worldwide in a variety of vertebrate species, suggesting that host range of this virus includes all warm-blooded animals. BDV persistently infects the central nervous system (CNS) of many animal species and causes neurobehavioral disorders resembling autism, such as anxiety, aggression, hyperactivity, abnormal play behavior, and cognitive deficits. We previously reported the generation of transgenic mice expressing BDV phosphoprotein (P) selectively in astrocytes. This transgenic mouse, P-Tg, showed striking neurobehavioral abnormalities resembling those in BDV-infected animals, such as enhanced intermale aggressiveness, hyperactivity and spatial reference memory deficit. To reveal the molecular mechanisms how glial cells induce these abnormalities, we performed microarray analysis using C6 rat glioma cells expressing either GFP (C6-GFP) or BDV P (C6-P). Sixty-eight genes are significantly affected in C6-P cells. The genes, whose products are localized at the extracellular region, were enriched in the differentially expressed genes in C6-P cells. Furthermore, gene ontology analysis revealed an emphasis on genes involved in morphogenesis. It is highly likely that the secretion of astrocyte factors may be widely dysregulated in the P-Tg, leading to the astrocyte hypofunction in the brain.
Project description:Giardiasis, caused by the protozoan parasite Giardia duodenalis, is an intestinal diarrheal disease affecting almost one billion people worldwide. A small endosymbiotic dsRNA viruses, G. lamblia virus (GLV), genus Giardiavirus, family Totiviridae, might inhabit human and animal isolates of G. duodenalis. Three GLV genomes have been sequenced so far, and only one was intensively studied, moreover a positive correlation between GLV and parasite virulence is yet to be proved. To understand the biological significance of GLV infection in Giardia, the characterization of several GLV strains from naturally infected G. duodenalis isolates is necessary. In the contest of high-throughput sequencing of four GLVs strains, from Giardia isolates of human and animal origin, we report on a new, unclassified viral sequence (designed GdRV-2), unrelated to Giardiavirus, encoding and expressing for a single large protein with a RdRp domain homologous to Totiviridae and Botybirnaviridae. We have analyzed the sequence of the GLV capsid protein (CP) and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) by LC-MS/MS analysis using different enzymatic strategies.
