@article{mbs:/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/vir.0.064014-0, author = "Goh, Zee Hong and Mohd, Nur Azmina Syakirin and Tan, Soon Guan and Bhassu, Subha and Tan, Wen Siang", title = "RNA-binding region of Macrobrachium rosenbergii nodavirus capsid protein", journal= "Journal of General Virology", year = "2014", volume = "95", number = "9", pages = "1919-1928", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1099/vir.0.064014-0", url = "https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/vir.0.064014-0", publisher = "Microbiology Society", issn = "1465-2099", type = "Journal Article", abstract = "White tail disease (WTD) kills prawn larvae and causes drastic losses to the freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) industry. The main causative agent of WTD is Macrobrachium rosenbergii nodavirus (MrNV). The N-terminal end of the MrNV capsid protein is very rich in positively charged amino acids and is postulated to interact with RNA molecules. N-terminal and internal deletion mutagenesis revealed that the RNA-binding region is located at positions 20–29, where 80 % of amino acids are positively charged. Substitution of all these positively charged residues with alanine abolished the RNA binding. Mutants without the RNA-binding region still assembled into virus-like particles, suggesting that this region is not a part of the capsid assembly domain. This paper is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to report the specific RNA-binding region of MrNV capsid protein.", }