A Viral mRNA Motif at the 3′-Untranslated Region that Confers Translatability in a Cell-Specific Manner. Implications for Virus Evolution

Sindbis virus (SINV) mRNAs contain several motifs that participate in the regulation of their translation. We have discovered a motif at the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) of viral mRNAs, constituted by three repeated sequences, which is involved in the translation of both SINV genomic and subgenomic mRNAs in insect, but not in mammalian cells. These data illustrate for the first time that an element present at the 3′-UTR confers translatability to mRNAs from an animal virus in a cell-specific manner. Sequences located at the beginning of the 5′-UTR may also regulate SINV subgenomic mRNA translation in both cell lines in a context of infection. Moreover, a replicon derived from Sleeping disease virus, an alphavirus that have no known arthropod vector for transmission, is much more efficient in insect cells when the repeated sequences from SINV are inserted at its 3′-UTR, due to the enhanced translatability of its mRNAs. Thus, these findings provide a clue to understand, at the molecular level, the evolution of alphaviruses and their host range.