Poster Presentation 8th Australasian Virology Society Meeting and 11th Annual Meeting of the Australian Centre for Hepatitis & HIV Virology Meeting 2015

Oyster viperin retains direct antiviral activity and its transcription occurs via a signalling pathway involving a heat-stable hemolymph protein (#196)

Tim Green 1 2 , Peter Speck 1 , Lu Geng 3 , David Raftos 2 , Michael Beard 3 , Karla Helbig 3
  1. Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA, Australia
  2. Department of Biological Sciences and Sydney Institute of Marine Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  3. School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Little is known about the response of non-model invertebrates, such as oysters, to viral infection. The vertebrate innate immune system detects virus-derived nucleic acids to trigger the type I interferon (IFN)-pathway, leading to the transcription of hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs) that exert antiviral functions. Invertebrates were thought to lack the IFN-pathway based on the absence of IFN or ISGs encoded in model-invertebrate genomes.  However, the oyster genome encodes many ISGs, including the well-described antiviral protein, viperin.  In this study, we characterise oyster-viperin and show it localises to caveolin-1 and inhibits Dengue virus replication in a heterologous model.  In a second set of experiments, we provide evidence that the hemolymph from poly(I:C)-injected oysters contains a heat-stable, protease-susceptible factor that induces hemocyte transcription of viperin mRNA in conjunction with upregulation of IFN-regulatory factor.  Collectively, these results support the concept that oysters have antiviral systems that are homologous to the vertebrate IFN-pathway.