The control of enterovirus A71 and herpes simplex virus replication by WW domain-containing oxidoreductase

Abstract

Fragile WWOX gene encodes a tumor suppressor WW domain-containing oxidoreductase In addition to its suppression of cancer progression WWOX protein has been reported to regulate embryonic development neuronal diseases apoptosis and pathogenic infections Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) is an RNA virus that belongs to Enterovirus genus in Picornavirus family Previous studies in our laboratory showed that WWOX suppressed EV-A71 infection To study whether WWOX also suppresses DNA virus infection herpes simplex virus (HSV) was tested in this study Our results showed that Wwox-/- mice had a higher mortality rate and body weight loss as compared with Wwox+/+ and Wwox+/- littermates after intraperitoneal injection of HSV-1 Together our results suggest that WWOX suppresses both EV-A71 and HSV-1 replication in host cells Viruses usually hijack host cell machinery to ensure viral genome replication and protein synthesis To investigate the molecular mechanism by which WWOX downregulates virus replication we first examined the expression of viral proteins after EV-A71 infection in WWOX-overexpression or -knockdown cell lines As compared with the control cells the expression levels of EV-A71 proteins were decreased in the RD cells overexpressing WWOX In the future the molecular mechanism by which WWOX suppresses viral replication via regulating signaling pathways in host cells will be further investigated

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Li-Jin Hsu (Supervisor)