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A single‐stranded loop in the 5′ untranslated region of cucumber mosaic virus RNA 4 contributes to competitive translational activity
Author(s) -
Kwon Chang Seob,
Chung Won-Il
Publication year - 1999
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/s0014-5793(99)01522-7
Subject(s) - five prime untranslated region , tobacco mosaic virus , biology , rna , untranslated region , open reading frame , three prime untranslated region , cucumber mosaic virus , nucleic acid secondary structure , virology , stem loop , translational regulation , virus , microbiology and biotechnology , translation (biology) , genetics , messenger rna , plant virus , gene , peptide sequence
The 5′ untranslated region (UTR) of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) RNA 4 confers a highly competitive translational advantage on a heterologous luciferase open reading frame. Here we investigated whether secondary structure in the 5′ UTR contributes to this translational advantage. Stabilization of the 5′ UTR RNA secondary structure inhibited competitive translational activity. Alteration of a potential single‐stranded loop to a stem by substitution mutations greatly inhibited the competitive translational activity. Tobacco plants infected with wild type virus showed a 2.5‐fold higher accumulation of maximal coat protein than did plants infected with a loop‐mutant virus. Amplification of viral RNA in these plants could not explain the difference in accumulation of coat protein. Phylogenetic comparison showed that potential single‐stranded loops of 12–23 nucleotides in length exist widely in subgroups of CMV.