Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 3, 2026

Modeling The Lifecycle Of Ebola Virus Under Biosafety Level 2 Conditions With Virus-like Particles Containing Tetracistronic Minigenomes
Published on: September 27, 2014
Conserved microsatellites may contribute to stem-loop structures in 5', 3' terminals of Ebolavirus genomes
Douyue Li1, Hongxi Zhang1, Shan Peng1
1Bioinformatics Center, College of Biology, Hunan University, Changsha, China.
Abstract:
Microsatellites (SSRs) are ubiquitous in coding and non-coding regions of the Ebolavirus genomes. We synthetically analyzed the microsatellites in whole-genome and terminal regions of 219 Ebolavirus genomes from five species. The Ebolavirus sequences were observed with small intraspecies variations and large interspecific variations, especially in the terminal non-coding regions. Only five conserved microsatellites were detected in the complete genomes, and four of them which well base-paired to help forming conserved stem-loop structures mainly appeared in the terminal non-coding regions. These results suggest that the conserved microsatellites may be evolutionary selected to form conserved secondary structures in 5', 3' terminals of Ebolavirus genomes. It may help to understand the biological significance of microsatellites in Ebolavirus and also other virus genomes.
Related Concept Videos
Conservation of Protein Domains Over Different Proteins
A limited set of protein domains often duplicate and recombine during evolution. These domains can be organized in different combinations to form...
Retroviruses
Leaky Scanning
Size and Structure of Viral Genomes
Subviral Agents

