Inhibition Of Coxsackievirus B3 By Sequence-specific ShRNA Expressing Plasmids In Vitro

Objective: The morbidity of viral myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy keeps increasing in the past ten years. Coxsackievirus group B (CVB) is considered the most infectious agent of human viral heart diseases, with CVB3 making up the most significant portion of such infections. CVB3 is a member of the genus Enterovirus in the Picornaviridae family and consists of a positive single-stranded RNA genome, coated by capsid protein VP1-4. It has a single open reading frame (ORF), which is flanked by 5`-and 3`-untranslated regions (UTR). Once released in the cytoplasm, the viral genomic RNA, about 7400 nucleotides in length, functions directly as a template for the production of viral proteins. Thus far, significant advances have been made on the research of viral genome, viral encoded protein and the molecular mechanism of pathogenesis. However, the antiviral drugs, vaccines or antisense oligonucleotides for prevention and treatment of CVB3 infected diseases are limited.RNA interference(RNAi) is a phenomenon of sequence-specific gene silence induced by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules that was first described for the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (Fire et al. 1998). Long...