Efficient inhibition of HIV-1 replication by an artificial polycistronic miRNA construct

Virology Journal

Ningshao Xia²  Jun Zhang²  Y Adam Yuan³  Jiahuai Han¹  Anthony Et Yeo²  Yijun Cai²  Lihua Wei²  Tong Cheng²  Tao Zhang² 

[1] The Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for Cell Biology and Tumor Cell Engineering, School of Life Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, People’s Republic of China;National Institute of Diagnostics and Vaccine Development in Infectious Diseases, Research Center for Medical Molecular Virology of Fujian Province, School of Life Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, People’s Republic of China;Xiamen-National University of Singapore Joint Laboratory in Biomedical Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, People’s Republic of China

关键词: siRNA;    RNA interference;    Viral escape;    HIV replication inhibition;    Artificial polycistronic transcript;   

Others  :  1154470
DOI  :  10.1186/1743-422X-9-118

 received in 2011-11-20, accepted in 2012-06-01,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

RNA interference (RNAi) has been used as a promising approach to inhibit human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) replication for both in vitro and in vivo animal models. However, HIV-1 escape mutants after RNAi treatment have been reported. Expressing multiple small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) against conserved viral sequences can serve as a genetic barrier for viral escape, and optimization of the efficiency of this process was the aim of this study.

Results

An artificial polycistronic transcript driven by a CMV promoter was designed to inhibit HIV-1 replication. The artificial polycistronic transcript contained two pre-miR-30a backbones and one pre-miR-155 backbone, which are linked by a sequence derived from antisense RNA sequence targeting the HIV-1 env gene. Our results demonstrated that this artificial polycistronic transcript simultaneously expresses three anti-HIV siRNAs and efficiently inhibits HIV-1 replication. In addition, the biosafety of MT-4 cells expressing this polycistronic miRNA transcript was evaluated, and no apparent impacts on cell proliferation rate, interferon response, and interruption of native miRNA processing were observed.

Conclusions

The strategy described here to generate an artificial polycistronic transcript to inhibit viral replication provided an opportunity to select and optimize many factors to yield highly efficient constructs expressing multiple siRNAs against viral infection.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Zhang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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