Effective Strategies for the Production of Recombinant 2A Protease Enteroviruses (A71 and D68) for Subsequent Design of Protease Inhibitors

Enteroviruses (EVs) are single-stranded RNA viruses with positive polarity that cause widespread diseases with significant health and economic impacts, commonly affecting both young children and adults. They are the most frequent causative agents of viral respiratory and neurological infections. While they typically cause mild symptoms, they can also lead to severe issues such as acute asthma attacks, acute paralysis, and myocarditis. Currently, there is no approved antiviral treatment, partly due to the extensive phenotypic diversity of enteroviruses. The molecular mechanisms by which enteroviruses cause these diseases are still poorly understood, but growing evidence points to two enteroviral proteases, 2Apro and 3Cpro, as key players in pathogenesis. 2Apro performs post-translational proteolytic processing of viral polyproteins and cleaves several host proteins to evade the antiviral immune response and support viral replication. Therefore, studies on 2Apro could reveal additional substrates that may be associated with specific diseases.

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