Schools

Fighting Viral Infections

Findings published in "Nature."

Researchers at Rutgers and UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School have determined the structure of a protein that is the first line of defense against fighting viral infections including influenza, hepatitis C, West Nile, rabies, and measles.

Principal investigators of the study, “Structural basis of RNA recognition and activation by innate immune receptor RIG-I”, chosen for advanced online publication in Nature on September 25, say the research is the first step towards developing broad-based drug therapies to combat viral infections.

“Understanding innate immunity to viral infections is crucial to developing drugs that can fight viruses or control inflammation,” said Joseph Marcotrigiano, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers, whose laboratory specializes in the protein structure and properties of RNA crystals. “Having this foundation is extremely important.”

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RIG-I is a receptor protein that recognizes differences in molecular patterns in order to differential viral RNA  -- the process during which virus particles makes new copies of themselves within a host cell and can then infect other cells -- from cellular RNA.

What researchers discovered, is that upon recognizing the double-stranded viral RNA, the RIG-I protein initiates a signal to induce anti-immune and anti-inflammatory defenses within the cell.

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Prior to this research, there was little information on how RIG-I protein recognized the viral infections, says Smita Patel, professor of biochemistry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, one of the principal investigators.  

“A failure of RIG-I to identify viral RNA can lead to alterations of the cell, including cell death, inflammation, autoimmune diseases and cancer,” Patel said.

This is the first step, the scientists say, in developing therapies that interfere with the viral infection and prevent the spread of the viral RNA from infecting healthy cells.

“This work provides unprecedented insights on the molecular mechanism of viral RNA recognition by RIG-I,” said Barbara Gerratana, who oversees enzyme catalysis grants at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. “As a result, we have a deeper understanding of how the human body fights viral infections a structural basis of the development of new anti-viral therapeutics.

-Rutgers University


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