Improved Zika virus plaque assay using Vero/TMPRSS2 cell line.

Unlabelled: Plaque assay is the gold standard for the quantification of viable cytopathic viruses like Zika virus (ZIKV). Some strains of ZIKV produce plaques that are very difficult to accurately visualize and count on the commonly used Vero cell line. From data generated in our lab, we became curious if Vero/TMPRSS2 cells may be a better alternative; therefore, we compared the plaque forming units of two strains of ZIKV on Vero/TMPRSS2 cells to those produced by Vero cells.

Zika virus dumbbell-1 structure is critical for sfRNA presence and cytopathic effect during infection.

All flaviviruses contain conserved RNA structures in the 3' untranslated region (3' UTR) that are important for flavivirus RNA replication, translation, and pathogenesis. Flaviviruses like Zika virus (ZIKV) contain multiple conserved RNA structures in the viral 3' UTR, including the structure known as dumbbell-1 (DB-1). Previous research has shown that the DB-1 structure is important for flavivirus positive-strand genome replication, but the functional role of the flavivirus DB-1 structure and the mechanism by which it contributes to viral pathogenesis are not known.

The 21st Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Virology Association.

Nestled within the Rocky Mountain National Forest, 114 scientists and students gathered at Colorado State University's Mountain Campus for this year's 21st annual Rocky Mountain National Virology Association meeting. This 3-day retreat consisted of 31 talks and 30 poster presentations discussing advances in research pertaining to viral and prion diseases. The keynote address provided a timely discussion on zoonotic coronaviruses, lessons learned, and the path forward towards predicting, preparing, and preventing future viral disease outbreaks.

Three-dimensional structure of a flavivirus dumbbell RNA reveals molecular details of an RNA regulator of replication.

Mosquito-borne flaviviruses (MBFVs) including dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, and Zika viruses have an RNA genome encoding one open reading frame flanked by 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTRs). The 3' UTRs of MBFVs contain regions of high sequence conservation in structured RNA elements known as dumbbells (DBs). DBs regulate translation and replication of the viral RNA genome, functions proposed to depend on the formation of an RNA pseudoknot.

Accurate design of translational output by a neural network model of ribosome distribution.

Synonymous codon choice can have dramatic effects on ribosome speed and protein expression. Ribosome profiling experiments have underscored that ribosomes do not move uniformly along mRNAs. Here, we have modeled this variation in translation elongation by using a feed-forward neural network to predict the ribosome density at each codon as a function of its sequence neighborhood.