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Rice black‐streaked dwarf virus minor core protein P8 is a nuclear dimeric protein and represses transcription in tobacco protoplasts
Author(s) -
Liu Huijun,
Wei Chunhong,
Zhong Yongwang,
Li Yi
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2007.04.071
Subject(s) - biology , psychological repression , gene , viral replication , transcription (linguistics) , virus , microbiology and biotechnology , gene silencing , transcriptional regulation , transcription factor , rna interference , gene expression , genetics , rna , linguistics , philosophy
Virus‐encoding nuclear transcriptional regulators play important roles in the viral life cycle. Most of these proteins exhibit intrinsic transcriptional activation or repression activity, and are involved in the regulation of the expression of virus genome itself or important cellular genes to facilitate viral replication and inhibit antiviral responses. Here, we report that the minor core protein P8 of Rice black‐streaked dwarf virus , a dsRNA virus infecting host plants and insects, is targeted to the nucleus of insect and plant cells via its N‐terminal 1–40 amino acids and possesses potent active transcriptional repression activity in Bright Yellow‐2 tobacco suspension cells. Moreover, P8, like many transcriptional regulatory proteins, is capable of forming homo‐dimers within insect cells and in vitro. All these data suggest that P8 is likely to enter the nucleus of host cell and play an important role as a negative transcriptional regulator of host gene expression during the process of virus–host interaction.