Transcription and Replication of Influenza Virion RNA in the Nucleus of Infected Cells

Abstract

Influenza virus is a negative-strand RNA virus with a segmented genome. Consequently, the virion contains the enzyme system that transcribes the virion RNA (vRNA) segments into mRNAs. The mRNAs are not full-length copies of the vRNAs (Hay et al. 1977a,b), so that a different type of transcription is needed in the infected cell to generate full-length copies, or template RNAs, for replication. The synthesis of template RNAs and their subsequent copying into vRNAs require the synthesis of one or more virus-specific proteins (Barrett et al. 1979; Hay et al. 1982). All steps of virus-specific RNA synthesis occur in the nucleus of infected cells (Herz et al. 1981; Shapiro et al. 1987). Here, we describe some of our recent results on the mechanism of transcription and replication of influenza vRNAs.