title: The Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus Bm111 affects virulence but not virus replication.
abstract: The Bm111 of Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV) encodes a small polypeptide (70 amino acids) of which the function remains unknown. To characterize its function, multiple sequence alignments were performed, and the predicted protein was found to share amazingly high (98 %) sequence identity with the Bombyx mandarina nucleopolyhedrovirus ORF110 (Boma110) but negligible with proteins of other insect viruses, indicating the close relationship between these two NPVs with silkworm larvae. The transcription of Bm111 was detected as early as 3 hpi in BmNPV-infected BmN cells, suggesting it is an early gene. To investigate the role of Bm111 in baculovirus life cycle, a Bm111-knockout virus was constructed by bacmid recombination in Escherichia coli. The results showed that knockout of the Bm111 did not affect the replication of virus DNA, but significantly extended the death time of infected silkworm larvae compared to the wild-type or rescued viruses. We also successfully expressed the recombinant protein Bm111 in E. coli to provide sufficient material for subsequent studies. Taken together, our data indicate that Bm111 only affects the virulence of BmNPV, but not its replication.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Life Sciences, Jiangsu University, 301 Xuefu Road, Zhenjiang, 212013, China, han1987sunny@163.com.
authors.forename: Yingying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Hengchuan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lü
authors.forename: Shangshang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Yanhua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Dandan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.forename: Quanbing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Keping
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D012831:Bombyx / Q000821:virology*; D004261:DNA Replication; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D007814:Larva; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017924:Nucleopolyhedroviruses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity / Q000502:physiology; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017384:Sequence Deletion; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D014774:Virulence; D014779:Virus Replication
chemical_list: D014764:Viral Proteins