Washington, Nov15 (ANI): A recent study has found that viral infection affects the stress responses of important mammalian cells.

The study, by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston , found that viral infection disrupts the normal response of cells to outside deleterious forces, cleaving and inactivating protein called G3BP that helps drive the formation of stress granules, which shelter the messenger RNAs that carry the code for protein formation.

The study discovered that the stress granules were formed when a cell is subjected to several kinds of stress, such as nutrient deprivation or virus infection. “When the cell suffers a major insult, it stops expanding. The business of protein synthesis (in which messenger RNA or mRNA’s genetic code gets translated into proteins that carry out cellular activities) is arrested, said Dr. Richard Lloyd, associate professor of molecular virology and microbiology at BCM

The messenger RNA goes into storage until conditions improve for the cells. Stress granules are a major storage site for the mRNA,” he added. The researcher however explained that, in poliovirus infection (used in the laboratory because it is a prototype for many kinds of viruses), the stress granules are formed early but as the infection continues, the stress granules disperse. The authors also determined that the poliovirus infection actually cuts or cleaves G3BP, a protein critical in the formation of the stress granules. “The cells respond to the viral infection, and then virus is shutting that response off, in effect, this type of cell response helps prevent the virus from translating its mRNA into virus proteins and killing the cells,” said Lloyd. “Other viruses may affect other proteins important in this type of stress response, poliovirus has evolved to target G3BP,” he added. The team concluded that stress granules could be formed during virus infection and that inhibited virus growth in the cells, when they transformed G3BP to make it resistant to being cut or cleaved. “With the cleavage resistant form, the cells can continue to make stress granules, and this interferes with virus reproduction” said Lloyd. The study appeared in the journal Cell Host and Microbe. (ANI)