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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Adenovirus Virus-Associated (VA) RNAs are the first discovered viral noncoding RNAs. By mimicking double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), the exceptionally abundant, multifunctional VA RNAs sabotage host machineries that sense, transport, process, or edit dsRNAs. How VA-I suppresses PKR activation despite its strong dsRNA character, and inhibits the crucial antiviral kinase to promote viral translation, remains largely unknown. Here, we report a 2.7 A crystal structure of VA-I RNA. The acutely bent VA-I features an unusually structured apical loop, a wobble-enriched, coaxially stacked apical and tetra-stems necessary and sufficient for PKR inhibition, and a central domain pseudoknot that resembles codon-anticodon interactions and prevents PKR activation by VA-I. These global and local structural features collectively define VA-I as an archetypal PKR inhibitor made of RNA. The study provides molecular insights into how viruses circumnavigate cellular rules of self vs non-self RNAs to not only escape, but further compromise host innate immunity.

Crystal structure of an adenovirus virus-associated RNA.,Hood IV, Gordon JM, Bou-Nader C, Henderson FE, Bahmanjah S, Zhang J Nat Commun. 2019 Jun 28;10(1):2871. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-10752-6. PMID:31253805^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.