The Roles of the 5′ and 3′ Untranslated Regions in Human Astrovirus Replication

Astroviruses are small nonenveloped single-stranded RNA viruses with a positive sense genome. They are known to cause gastrointestinal disease in a broad spectrum of species. Although astroviruses are distributed worldwide, a gap in knowledge of their biology and disease pathogenesis persists. Many positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses show conserved and functionally important structures in their 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs). However, not much is known about the role of the 5′ and 3′ UTRs in the viral replication of HAstV-1. We analyzed the UTRs of HAstV-1 for secondary RNA structures and mutated them, resulting in partial or total UTR deletion. We used a reverse genetic system to study the production of infectious viral particles and to quantify protein expression in the 5′ and 3′ UTR mutants, and we established an HAstV-1 replicon system containing two reporter cassettes in open reading frames 1a and 2, respectively. Our data show that 3′ UTR deletions almost completely abolished viral protein expression and that 5′ UTR deletions led to a reduction in infectious virus particles in infection experiments. This indicates that the presence of the UTRs is essential for the life cycle of HAstV-1 and opens avenues for further research.