The composition and assembly mechanism of the oral infection factor complex of rod virus.

On January 2, 2019, the international academic journal Journal of Virology published the latest research results of the team of Hu Zhihong, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology/National Key Laboratory of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with a paper entitled Baculovirus Per os Infectivity Complex: Components and Assembly (The Rod Virus Oral Infection Factor Complex: Components and Assembly).
the work revealed the composition and assembly mechanism of the oral infection factor complex of rod virus.
rod virus is a kind of insect-specific virus, which has important application value in the biological control of pests and the expression of exogenous genes.
the virus invading host insects relies on a series of oral infection factors (per os infection factors, PIFs) on the virus sac), most of which function in the form of a protein complex, however the composition and assembly mechanism of the complex are not clear.
the study carried out Blue native PAGE separation, mass spectrometry and Western blot analysis on three different rod virus PIF complexes, revealing that the PIF complex was 500 kDa in size, including 9 components (PIF0-4, PIF6-9), of which PIF9 was newly discovered oral infection factor.
used synthetic technology to knock out the nine members of the complex one by one, and found that PIF1, 2 and 3 are the core components, which form a core complex of 230 kDa, providing a platform for the assembly of the complete composite (Figure A).
the detection of a complete PIF complex in the cytoplasm through nuclear-mass separation, and a pattern diagram of the assembly and transport of the complex within the cell (Figure B).
the study systematically analyzed the composition and assembly of the Rod Virus PIF complex, laying the foundation for future research into the structure and function of the complex, which the reviewers considered to be "This will be a landmark paper in the baculovirus field" (which will become an iconic paper in the field of rod virus research). Wang Xi, a doctoral student at Wuhan Virus Institute in
, is the first author of the paper, and Hu Zhihong and associate researcher Wang Manli are co-authors of the paper.
the research was supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Frontier Science Key Research Project (QYZDJ-SSW-SMC021), the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Pilot Science and Technology Special (XDB11030400), the National Natural Science Foundation Innovation Group Project (31621061) and key projects (31130058), and the National Key Laboratory of Virology Virology Frontier Science Research Project (klv-2016-03).
Source: Wuhan Virus Research Institute.