Nucleic acid-induced antiviral immunity in shrimp

Abstract

Vertebrates detect viral infection predominantly by sensing viral nucleic acids to produce type I interferon (IFN). In invertebrates, it has been believed that the IFN system is absent and RNA interference is a sequence-specific antiviral pathway. In this study, we found that injection of nucleic acid mimics poly(I:C), poly(C:G), CL097, poly C and CpG-DNA, afforded shrimp antiviral immunity, which is similar to the vertebrate IFN system. Using suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) method, 480 expression sequence tags were identified to be involved in the poly(I:C)-induced antiviral immunity of the model crustacean Litopenaeus vannamei, and 41% of them were new genes. In the SSH libraries, several IFN system-related genes such as dsRNA-dependent protein kinase PKR, Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) and IFNγ-inducible protein 30 were identified. L. vannamei IKKε, whose vertebrate homologs are central regulators of the IFN-producing pathway, could significantly activate IFN reporter genes in HEK293T cells. In crustacean databases, many genes homologous to genes of the vertebrate IFN response, such as IRFs, PKR, ADAR (adenosine deaminase, RNA-specific) and other interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) were discovered. These results suggest that shrimp may possess nucleic acid-induced antiviral immunity.

Keywords: 2′5′-oligoadenylate synthase; ADAR; AMP; Antiviral immunity; EST; IKK; IRF; ISG; IκB kinase; Litopenaeus vannamei; Mx; Myxovirus resistance; NLR; NLS; Nucleic acids; OAS; ORF; PAMP; PRRs; Poly(I:C); RISC; RLR; RNA interference; RNA-induced silencing complex; RNAi; SSH; TANK-binding kinase 1; TBK1; WSSV; adenosine deaminase, RNA-specific; antimicrobial peptide genes; expression sequence tag; interferon regulatory factor; interferon stimulated gene; nuclear localization signal; nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain (NOD)-like receptor; open reading frame; pathogen-associated molecular pattern; pattern-recognition receptors; retinoic acid-inducible gene (RIG)-I-like receptor; single-stranded RNA; ssRNA; suppression subtractive hybridization; white spot syndrome virus.