Frequency of a nucleotide overhang at the 5' end of hemorrhagic fever mammarenavirus genomes in public sequence data

Neriya, Y.; Kojima, S.; Kishimoto, M.; Sakiyama, A.; Iketani, T.; Watanabe, T.; Abe, Y.; Shimoda, H.; Nakagawa, K.; Koma, T.; Matsumoto, Y.

doi:10.1101/2022.02.04.479072

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2022.02.04.479072

Frequency of a nucleotide overhang at the 5' end of hemorrhagic fever mammarenavirus genomes in public sequence data

Neriya, Y.·Kojima, S.·Kishimoto, M.·Sakiyama, A.·Iketani, T.·Watanabe, T.·Abe, Y.·Shimoda, H.·Nakagawa, K.·Koma, T.·Matsumoto, Y.

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Abstract

Mammarenaviruses, such as Lassa virus and South American hemorrhagic fever (SAHF) virus, cause severe hemorrhagic fevers in humans, and pose major threats to public health. Mammarenaviruses consist of a bi-segmented negative-sense RNA genome in which the 5 and 3 ends form complementary strands that serve as a replication promoter. Some mammarenaviruses have a nucleotide overhang at the 5 genome end. By examining the complementarity of 5 and 3 genome ends using public mammarenavirus genome sequences, we found that the 5 guanine overhang (5-G overhang) was present more frequently in Lassa and SAHF viruses than in other viruses. The 5-G overhang in the Lassa and SAHF virus sequences was found to be restricted to the L and S segments, respectively. If the genome end sequence data in the public database are accurate, the 5-G overhang may be related to the high pathogenicity of mammarenaviruses in humans.

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Neriya, Y., Kojima, S., Kishimoto, M., Sakiyama, A., Iketani, T., Watanabe, T., Abe, Y., Shimoda, H., Nakagawa, K., Koma, T., Matsumoto, Y.. 2022-02-05. Frequency of a nucleotide overhang at the 5' end of hemorrhagic fever mammarenavirus genomes in public sequence data. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.04.479072

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