Non-structural proteins of arthropod-borne bunyaviruses: roles and functions

Viruses within the Bunyaviridae family are tri-segmented, negative-stranded RNA viruses. The family includes several emerging and re-emerging viruses of humans, animals and plants, such as Rift Valley fever virus, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, La Crosse virus, Schmallenberg virus and tomato spotted wilt virus. Many bunyaviruses are arthropod-borne, so-called arboviruses. Depending on the genus, bunyaviruses encode, in addition to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and the different structural proteins, one or several non-structural proteins. These non-structural proteins are not always essential for virus growth and replication but can play an important role in viral pathogenesis through their interaction with the host innate immune system. In this review, we will summarize current knowledge and understanding of insect-borne bunyavirus non-structural protein function(s) in vertebrate, plant and arthropod

超平面制約付き非線形方程式に対するニュートン反復を利用した特異値分解法

九州大学応用力学研究所研究集会報告 No.21ME-S7 「非線形波動研究の現状と将来 : 次の10 年への展望」RIAM Symposium No.21ME-S7 Current and Future Research on Nonlinear Waves : Perspectives for the Next Decade行列の特異値問題を非線形方程式の求解問題に置き換え、これをニュートン法に似た反復計算で数値的に解くことによって特異値分解を得る方法を紹介する。さらに、この特異値分解法のいくつかの理論的性質を明らかにし、実用的なハイブリッド版を示す

The effect of cooperative integrated reading and composition technique on students’ reading comprehension at grade xi SMA N 5 Padangsidimpuan

This research only focused to low ability of students’ reading comprehension. It was solved by choosing Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique. The problems of students in reading comprehension were: (1) The students was lack of vocabularies (2) The students felt bored. (3) The students reading comprehension was low (4) The teacher never applied the technique in teaching reading comprehension. They still used conventional technique in teaching reading. The purpose of this research is to know whether there is the effect of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique on students’ reading comprehension at grade XI SMA N 5 Padangsidimpuan. The method that is used in this research was experimental research. Two classes were chosen randomly as the sample. They were XI IPA 3 as experimental class that consisted of 30 students and XI IPA 4 as control class that consisted of 30 students. It was taken after conducting normality and homogeneity test. The data was derived from pre-test and post-test. To analyze the data, the researcher used t-test formula. After analyzing the data, the researcher found that the mean score of experimental class after using Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique was higher than control class. Mean score of experimental class before using Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique was 60.6 and mean score after using Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique was 77.3 and it had gain 16.7. The effect of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique on students’ reading comprehension at Grade XI SMA N 5 Padangsidimpuan was 1.727 with tcount was higher than ttable (1.727> 1.67155). It meant that Ha was accepted and H0 was rejected. There was effect of Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition technique on students’ reading comprehension at grade XI SMA N 5 Padangsidimpuan

Evaluation of Road Traffic Crash Data Collection and Management System: Case study of Jimma Town

Periodical increment of traffic accident in appreciable manner is currently becoming a world agenda especially in developing country like Ethiopia. The data collection plays an important role in determining the main cause of RTA and defining the laws for road users that are safer to be adopted in the future. And this investigation is designed to evaluate traffic crash data collection and management system of Jimma town. To reach up on expected outcome; the study used secondary data collected from Jimma police commission and city municipality. Primary data were collected via oral, and written interview of different concerned bodies in addition to site observation. Mainly three local road segments were selected for special emphasis on the basis of secondary data and site investigation. Basically, descriptive and statistical analysis approach was used to analyze the data collected. The study revealed that the main causes of traffic accident were identified to be nature of road and driver behaviour which accounts about 46% and 38% respectively. Statical analysis of accident data demonstrated the severity index to be 22%. In regards to accident costing, the study concluded that Jimma town is losing about 13 million birr per year due to the occurrences of accident. This study evaluated the gap of existing crash data collection forms and forwarded points to be included in details. Finally, the researcher proposed implementable corrective measures like road maintenance; follow up on driver driving licence quality, awareness creation work, installation of traffic sign and marks, vehicle examination as a management system. To counter attack the problem faced due to road traffic accident the government and other stakeholder must careful the issues to minimize road traffic accidents in Jimma town. Moreover, the developments of uniform standard across the country and use of Google Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Global Positioning System (GPS) and online data storing mechanism in parallel with manual recording were proposed as data collection mechanism besides to crash data collection format

Restriction of Rift Valley Fever Virus Virulence in Mosquito Cells

Arboviruses are maintained in a natural cycle that requires blood-sucking arthropod and vertebrate hosts. Arboviruses are believed to persistently infect their arthropod host without overt pathology and cause acute infection with viremia in their vertebrate host. We have focused on elucidating how a specific arbovirus, Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus, causes cytopathic effect in cells derived from vertebrates and non-cytopathic infection in cells derived from arthropods. We demonstrate that the vertebrate virulence factor, NSs, is functional in arthropod cells but is expressed at significantly lower levels in infected arthropod versus infected vertebrate cells

Current Status of Rift Valley Fever Vaccine Development

Citation: Faburay, B.; LaBeaud, A.D.; McVey, D.S.; Wilson, W.C.; Richt, J.A. Current Status of Rift Valley Fever Vaccine Development. Vaccines 2017, 5, 29.Rift Valley Fever (RVF) is a mosquito-borne zoonotic disease that presents a substantial threat to human and public health. It is caused by Rift Valley fever phlebovirus (RVFV), which belongs to the genus Phlebovirus and the family Phenuiviridae within the order Bunyavirales. The wide distribution of competent vectors in non-endemic areas coupled with global climate change poses a significant threat of the transboundary spread of RVFV. In the last decade, an improved understanding of the molecular biology of RVFV has facilitated significant progress in the development of novel vaccines, including DIVA (differentiating infected from vaccinated animals) vaccines. Despite these advances, there is no fully licensed vaccine for veterinary or human use available in non-endemic countries, whereas in endemic countries, there is no clear policy or practice of routine/strategic livestock vaccinations as a preventive or mitigating strategy against potential RVF disease outbreaks. The purpose of this review was to provide an update on the status of RVF vaccine development and provide perspectives on the best strategies for disease control. Herein, we argue that the routine or strategic vaccination of livestock could be the best control approach for preventing the outbreak and spread of future disease

Rift Valley Fever Virus NSs Protein Promotes Post-Transcriptional Downregulation of Protein Kinase PKR and Inhibits eIF2α Phosphorylation

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) (genus Phlebovirus, family Bunyaviridae) is a negative-stranded RNA virus with a tripartite genome. RVFV is transmitted by mosquitoes and causes fever and severe hemorrhagic illness among humans, and fever and high rates of abortions in livestock. A nonstructural RVFV NSs protein inhibits the transcription of host mRNAs, including interferon-β mRNA, and is a major virulence factor. The present study explored a novel function of the RVFV NSs protein by testing the replication of RVFV lacking the NSs gene in the presence of actinomycin D (ActD) or α-amanitin, both of which served as a surrogate of the host mRNA synthesis suppression function of the NSs. In the presence of the host-transcriptional inhibitors, the replication of RVFV lacking the NSs protein, but not that carrying NSs, induced double-stranded RNA-dependent protein kinase (PKR)–mediated eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF)2α phosphorylation, leading to the suppression of host and viral protein translation. RVFV NSs promoted post-transcriptional downregulation of PKR early in the course of the infection and suppressed the phosphorylated eIF2α accumulation. These data suggested that a combination of RVFV replication and NSs-induced host transcriptional suppression induces PKR-mediated eIF2α phosphorylation, while the NSs facilitates efficient viral translation by downregulating PKR and inhibiting PKR-mediated eIF2α phosphorylation. Thus, the two distinct functions of the NSs, i.e., the suppression of host transcription, including that of type I interferon mRNAs, and the downregulation of PKR, work together to prevent host innate antiviral functions, allowing efficient replication and survival of RVFV in infected mammalian hosts

A singular value decomposition algorithm based on solving hyperplane constrained nonlinear systems

A new algorithm for singular value decomposition (SVD) is presented through relating SVD problem to nonlinear systems whose solutions are constrained on hyperplanes. The hyperplane constrained nonlinear systems are solved with the help of Newton’s iterative method. It is proved that our SVD algorithm has the quadratic convergence substantially and all singular pairs are computable. These facts are also confirmed by some numerical examples