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Updated: Jul 14, 2026

Confocal Imaging of Double-Stranded RNA and Pattern Recognition Receptors in Negative-Sense RNA Virus Infection
Published on: January 26, 2019
Double-stranded DNA and double-stranded RNA induce a common antiviral signaling pathway in human cells
Guofeng Cheng1, Jin Zhong, Josan Chung
1Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Abstract:
Virus infection triggers IFN immune defenses in infected cells in part through viral nucleic acid interactions, but the pathways by which dsDNA and DNA viruses trigger innate defenses are only partially understood. Here we present evidence that both retinoic acid-induced gene I (RIG-I) and mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein (MAVS) are required for dsDNA-induced IFN-beta promoter activation in a human hepatoma cell line (Huh-7), and that activation is efficiently blocked by the hepatitis C virus NS3/4A protease, which is known to block dsRNA signaling by cleaving MAVS. These findings suggest that dsDNA and dsRNA share a common pathway to trigger the innate antiviral defense response in human cells, although dsDNA appears to trigger that pathway upstream of the dsRNA-interacting protein RIG-I.
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