A Novel, Fully Spliced, Accessory Gene in Equine Lentivirus with Distinct Rev-Responsive Element

作者：Xiangmin Zhang, Jiwei Li, Mengmeng Zhang, Bowen Bai, Weiwei Ma, Yuezhi Lin, Xing Guo, Xuefeng Wang, Xiaojun Wang · 发表于：Journal of Virology · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1128/jvi.00986-22 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Virus-based gene therapy research、HIV Research and Treatment、RNA regulation and disease

In lentiviruses, the nuclear export of viral transcripts is an important step in controlling viral gene expression. Generally, the unspliced and incompletely spliced transcripts are exported via the CRM1-dependent export pathway in a process mediated by the viral Rev protein by binding to the Rev-responsive element (RRE) located within the Env-coding region. However, the completely spliced transcripts are exported via an endogenous cellular pathway, which was Rev independent. Here, we identified a novel fully spliced transcript from EIAV and demonstrated that it encoded a viral protein, termed Mat. Interestingly, we determined that the expression of Mat depended on Rev and identified that the first exon of Mat mRNA could specifically bind to Rev and be exported to the cytoplasm, which suggested that the first exon of Mat mRNA was a second RRE of EIAV. These findings provided important insights into the Rev-dependent nuclear export of completely spliced transcripts in lentiviruses.