title: RNA-binding region of Macrobrachium rosenbergii nodavirus capsid protein.
abstract: White tail disease (WTD) kills prawn larvae and causes drastic losses to the freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) industry. The main causative agent of WTD is Macrobrachium rosenbergii nodavirus (MrNV). The N-terminal end of the MrNV capsid protein is very rich in positively charged amino acids and is postulated to interact with RNA molecules. N-terminal and internal deletion mutagenesis revealed that the RNA-binding region is located at positions 20-29, where 80 % of amino acids are positively charged. Substitution of all these positively charged residues with alanine abolished the RNA binding. Mutants without the RNA-binding region still assembled into virus-like particles, suggesting that this region is not a part of the capsid assembly domain. This paper is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to report the specific RNA-binding region of MrNV capsid protein.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Zee Hong
authors.initials: ZH
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Nur Azmina Syakirin
authors.initials: NAS
authors.lastname: Mohd
authors.affiliation: Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Soon Guan
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Subha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bhassu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Bioscience, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.|Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Wen Siang
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Tan
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D002213:Capsid / Q000821:virology; D036022:Capsid Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D005393:Fish Diseases; D030381:Nodaviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D033541:Palaemonidae / Q000145:classification / Q000821:virology; D017354:Point Mutation / Q000235:genetics; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D012327:RNA Virus Infections; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D017384:Sequence Deletion / Q000235:genetics; D019065:Virus Assembly / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D036022:Capsid Proteins; D012367:RNA, Viral; D016601:RNA-Binding Proteins