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Updated: Dec 24, 2025

Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes: A Functional Genomics Tool for the Study of Positive-strand RNA Viruses
Published on: December 29, 2015
cis-acting genomic elements and trans-acting proteins involved in the assembly of RNA viruses
Sondra Schlesinger1, Shinji Makino1, Maxine L Linial1
1Department of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110-1093; Department of Microbiology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 and Division of Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 98104, USA.
Abstract:
There is now considerable evidence that a specific site (or sites) in the genome of an RNA virus interacts with a viral protein to initiate the assembly of the virus ribonucleoprotein or nucleocapsid. We describe the progress that has been made in defining these elements for a number of different viruses: the togavirus, Sindbis virus; the coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus; influenza A virus; several retroviruses; and the hepadnavirus, hepatitis B virus. The importance of cis-acting elements in packaging has been established for all of these viruses. For Sindbis virus, specificity in the binding of the RNA element to a region of the viral capsid protein in vitro has also been demonstrated.
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