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Updated: May 11, 2026

MicroRNA-based Regulation of Picornavirus Tropism
Published on: February 6, 2017
Inhibition of Dengue virus 2 replication by artificial micrornas targeting the conserved regions
Pei-wen Xie1, Yu Xie, Xiu-juan Zhang
1Department of Biotechnology, Beijing Institute of Radiation Medicine, Beijing 100850, China.
Abstract:
Dengue virus (DENV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus, causes serious diseases and threatens public health in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide. RNA interference (RNAi) is a prevailing strategy for antiviral therapy. In this paper, 6 single artificial microRNAs (amiRNAs) targeting the highly conserved regions of the DENV-2 genome were identified and inhibited virus replication efficiently. Then, effective tandem amiRNAs targeting 2 different DENV-2 genome regions were constructed and expressed simultaneously from a single microRNA-like polycistron to avoid virus variation or mutation escape. Finally, the most high-performance tandem amiRNA was embedded in a lenti-viral vector and inhibited DENV-2 virus replication stably and dose-dependently. Overall, these results indicated that RNAi based on multiple amiRNAs targeting viral conserved regions was an effective approach for improvements of nucleic acid inhibitors of DENV and provided a new therapeutic strategy for DENV infection in humans.
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