A Baculovirus-Expressed Dicistrovirus That Is Infectious to Aphids

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2007-09-01
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Boyapalle, Sandhya
Beckett, Randy
Miller, W.
Bonning, Bryony
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Miller, W. Allen
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Bonning, Bryony
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Entomology

The Department of Entomology seeks to teach the study of insects, their life-cycles, and the practicalities in dealing with them, for use in the fields of business, industry, education, and public health. The study of entomology can be applied towards evolution and ecological sciences, and insects’ relationships with other organisms & humans, or towards an agricultural or horticultural focus, focusing more on pest-control and management.

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The Department of Entomology was founded in 1975 as a result of the division of the Department of Zoology and Entomology.

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Detailed investigation of virus replication is facilitated by the construction of a full-length infectious clone of the viral genome. To date, this has not been achieved for members of the family Dicistroviridae. Here we demonstrate the construction of a baculovirus that expresses a dicistrovirus that is infectious in its natural host. We inserted a full-length cDNA clone of the genomic RNA of the dicistrovirus Rhopalosiphum padi virus (RhPV) into a baculovirus expression vector. Virus particles containing RhPV RNA accumulated in the nuclei of baculovirus-infected Sf21 cells expressing the recombinant RhPV clone. These virus particles were infectious in R. padi, a ubiquitous aphid vector of major cereal viruses. The recombinant virus was transmitted efficiently between aphids, despite the presence of 119 and 210 vector-derived bases that were stably maintained at the 5′ and 3′ ends, respectively, of the RhPV genome. The maintenance of such a nonviral sequence was surprising considering that most RNA viruses tolerate few nonviral bases beyond their natural termini. The use of a baculovirus to express a small RNA virus opens avenues for investigating replication of dicistroviruses and may allow large-scale production of these viruses for use as biopesticides.

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This article is from Journal of Virology 81, no. 17 (2007): 9339–9345, doi:10.1128/JVI.00417-07.

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Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2007
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