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Journal of General Virology header logo Journal of General Virology

Volume 96, Issue 3

Establishment of a minigenome system for Oropouche virus reveals the S genome segment to be significantly longer than reported previously No Access

Abstract

Oropouche virus (OROV) is a medically important orthobunyavirus, which causes frequent outbreaks of a febrile illness in the northern parts of Brazil. However, despite being the cause of an estimated half a million human infections since its first isolation in Trinidad in 1955, details of the molecular biology of this tripartite, negative-sense RNA virus remain limited. We have determined the complete nucleotide sequence of the Brazilian prototype strain of OROV, BeAn 19991, and found a number of differences compared with sequences in the database. Most notable were that the S segment contained an additional 204 nt at the 3′ end and that there was a critical nucleotide mismatch at position 9 within the base-paired terminal panhandle structure of each genome segment. In addition, we obtained the complete sequence of the Trinidadian prototype strain TRVL-9760 that showed similar characteristics to the BeAn 19991 strain. By using a T7 RNA polymerase-driven minigenome system, we demonstrated that cDNA clones of the BeAn 19991 L and S segments expressed functional proteins, and also that the newly determined terminal untranslated sequences acted as functional promoters in the minigenome assay. By co-transfecting a cDNA to the viral glycoproteins, virus-like particles were generated that packaged a minigenome and were capable of infecting naive cells.

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© 2015 The Authors
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2015-03-01
2025-12-16

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/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/jgv.0.000005
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Establishment of a minigenome system for Oropouche virus reveals the S genome segment to be significantly longer than reported previously
J. Gen. Virol. 96, 513 (2015); https://doi.org/10.1099/jgv.0.000005
/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/jgv.0.000005
/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/jgv.0.000005
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