Nervous necrosis virus (NNV) can infect many species of fish and has an 80-100% mortality rate. NNV capsid protein (NNVCP) is the only structural protein of NNV, but there are few studies on the protein-protein interaction between NNVCP and the host cell. To investigate NNV morphogenesis, native NNV capsid protein (NNVCP) was used to screen for protein-protein interactions in this study. The results identified that 49 grouper optic nerve proteins can interact with NNVCP and may function as putative receptor or co-receptor, cytoskeleton, glucose metabolism and ATP generation, immunity, mitochondrial ion regulation, and ribosomal proteins. Creatine kinase B-type (CKB) is one of those 49 optic nerve proteins. CKB, a kind of enzyme of ATP generation, was confirmed to interact with NNVCP by far-Western blot and showed to colocalize with NNVCP in GF-1 cells. Compared to the control, the expression of CKB was significantly induced in the brain and eyes infected with NNV. Moreover, the amount of replication of NNV is relatively high in cells expressing CKB. In addition to providing the database of proteins that can interact with NNVCP for subsequent analysis, the results of this research also verified that CKB plays an important role in the morphogenesis of NNV.
Keywords: creatine kinase; far-Western blot; immunoprecipitation assay; nervous necrosis virus; protein–protein interaction.