A Cap-to-Tail Guide to mRNA Translation Strategies in Virus-Infected Cells

Eric Jan, Ian Mohr, Derek Walsh

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

112 Scopus citations

Abstract

Although viruses require cellular functions to replicate, their absolute dependence upon the host translation machinery to produce polypeptides indispensable for their reproduction is most conspicuous. Despite their incredible diversity, the mRNAs produced by all viruses must engage cellular ribosomes. This has proven to be anything but a passive process and has revealed a remarkable array of tactics for rapidly subverting control over and dominating cellular regulatory pathways that influence translation initiation, elongation, and termination. Besides enforcing viral mRNA translation, these processes profoundly impact host cell-intrinsic immune defenses at the ready to deny foreign mRNA access to ribosomes and block protein synthesis. Finally, genome size constraints have driven the evolution of resourceful strategies for maximizing viral coding capacity. Here, we review the amazing strategies that work to regulate translation in virus-infected cells, highlighting both virus-specific tactics and the tremendous insight they provide into fundamental translational control mechanisms in health and disease.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)283-307
Number of pages25
JournalAnnual Review of Virology
Volume3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 29 2016

Funding

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: We apologize to colleagues whose contributions were not cited owing to space restrictions. We selected primary literature citations mainly from the past 10 years and relied on reviews for earlier studies to limit citation numbers. Work in the authors' laboratories is supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-81244 to E.J.) and the National Institutes of Health (AI073898 and GM056927 to I.M.; R21AI105330 to D.W.).

Keywords

  • Host responses
  • IRES
  • MRNA structure
  • Protein synthesis
  • Ribosome
  • Signaling
  • Translation factor
  • Virus

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Virology

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