The RNA silencing endonuclease Argonaute 2 mediates specific antiviral immunity in Drosophila melanogaster.
By R. V. van Rij, M. Saleh, Bassam Berry, Catherine K. Foo, A. Houk, C. Antoniewski, Raul Andino. Genes & Development, 2006
613 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Most organisms have evolved defense mechanisms to protect themselves from viruses and other pathogens. Arthropods lack the protein-based adaptive immune response found in vertebrates. Here we show that the central catalytic component of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), the nuclease Argonaute 2 (Ago-2), is essential for antiviral defense in adult Drosophila melanogaster. Ago-2-defective flies are hypersensitive to infection with a major fruit fly pathogen, Drosophila C virus (DCV), and with Cricket Paralysis virus (CrPV). Increased mortality in ago-2 mutant flies was associated with a dramatic increase in viral RNA accumulation and virus titers. The physiological significance of this antiviral mechanism is underscored by our finding that DCV encodes a potent suppressor of RNA interference (RNAi). This suppressor binds long double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) and inhibits Dicer-2-mediated processing of dsRNA into short interfering RNA (siRNA), but does not bind short siRNAs or disrupt the microRNA (miRNA) pathway. Based on these results we propose that RNAi is a major antiviral immune defense mechanism in Drosophila.
Subfields: Immunology, Insect Science, Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07cb7e90784a37e75edc67bec266e3ae358e25c7
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Citations in the corpus
- Antiviral immunity directed by small RNAs. (2007, neutral): “Viral Antisilencing Strategies In Drosophila, the ock-house virus B2 and Drosophila C virus/cricket paralysis virus 1A proteins directly inhibit viral dsRNA processing (Lu et al., 2005; Fenner et al., 2007; van Rij et al., 2006).”
- RNA-based antiviral immunity (2010, background): “Compared with wild-type flies, dcr2 -mutant flies have increased disease susceptibility to the following (+)RNA viruses from three virus families: FHV, Sindbis virus, Drosophila C virus (DCV) and cricket paralysis viru”