RNA viruses : the strategies they employ to interfere with host cell protein expression and to synthesize viral proteins, and a new way to identify their RNA in biological samples
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Gabrielle Patricia Dailey (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Ethan Taylor
Abstract: This dissertation is composed of the projects I worked on that were able to be made into scientific papers. My projects centered primarily around viral RNAs and how they interact with host cell mRNAs coding for selenoprotein, and if these effects were negated or enhanced by the addition of selenium to the environment. The first chapter of this dissertation is an introduction into selenoprotein synthesis and importance, viral implications in history, and viral survival strategies. My first author publication is the second chapter of this dissertation, and the one I spent the majority of my time on. It concerns predicted antisense interactions between conserved regions in the 3’ untranslated region of Zika viral RNA and selenoprotein mRNA’s in the host cell. Aside from the initial computational data for the antisense interactions between Zika (ZIKV) RNA and SePP1 and TXNRD1 host cell RNA species, along with the gel shift assay using oligonucleotides that matched the predicted sequences, all work in the first chapter of this dissertation was performed. This manuscript has been submitted to BBA Advances. The third chapter is the continuation of Dr. Lakmini Premadasa’s work supporting the hypothesis that an antisense tethering region between TXNRD1 mRNA in the host cell and the 3’ untranslated region downstream of the nef gene in HIV-1 could lead to a UGA stop codon readthrough at the 3’ end of the nef gene resulting in a longer nef protein isoform. There were some issues reviewers posed before it could be published, and Dr. Premadasa was no longer around to be able to address the concerns, so my contributions to this manuscript involved a Western blot probe of GFP expression as a result of the proposed UGA stop codon readthrough event and if selenium had any effect on GFP expression. This manuscript preprint is published and the manuscript itself has been resubmitted to the American Journal of Pharmacotherapy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. For the fourth chapter of this dissertation, I was lucky to get to collaborate with Dr. Adam Hall and Dr. Komal Sethi at the Wake Forest School of Medicine with a project regarding HIV-1 identification via Solid-State nanopore technology. I was responsible for synthesizing all RNA used for the experiments and was part of the HIV-1 and probe designs used in the experiments. I provided a write up of my RNA synthesis, purification, and quantification procedure for the paper. This manuscript has officially been approved for publication in ACS Nano.
RNA viruses : the strategies they employ to interfere with host cell protein expression and to synthesize viral proteins, and a new way to identify their RNA in biological samples
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Created on 8/1/2021
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 2021
- Keywords
- Antisense, HIV, Micocephaly, Selenoprotein P, Thioredoxin Reductase, Zika
- Subjects
- RNA viruses
- Selenoproteins
- Viral proteins
- HIV (Viruses)
- Zika virus