On July 26th, 2014, scientists from Dr. Chunfu Zheng’s group published its tenth article of JVI. The article entitled “Herpes Simplex Virus 1 Counteracts Viperin via Its Virion Host Shutoff Protein UL41” reported for the first time that Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (HSV-1) evaded the antiviral function of viperin via its tegument protein UL41.
The type I interferon stimulated gene viperin restricts a broad range of DNA and RNA viruses. In our study, it was shown for the first time that viperin couldn’t inhibit the replication of wild type (WT) HSV-1. With a high throughout screen assay from all HSV-1 encoded 84 proteins, the tegument protein UL41 was found to be able to downregulate the expression of viperin. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that ectopicly expressed viperin counteracted the replication of UL41-null HSV-1, but not WT and Us11-null viruses. It was further showed that, compared with UL41-null viruses, WT HSV-1 or ectopicly expressed UL41 markedly abrogated viperin expression, suggesting that UL41 dampened the antiviral activity of viperin by reducing its mRNA accumulation. The present work provides novel evidence of HSV-1 to evade the host innate immunity.
Graduate stuent Mr. Guanghui Shen is the first author and Drs. Kezhen Wang, Shuai Wang, Meili-Li and Mingsheng-Cai are co-authors. Professor Chunfu Zheng is the corresponding author. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81371795) and Jiangsu Provincial Innovative Research Team.