The porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus nsp1 is predicted to be auto-cleaved from the replicase polyprotein into nsp1alpha and nsp1beta subunits. In infected cells, we detected the actual existence of nsp1alpha and nsp1beta. Cleavage sites between nsp1alpha/nsp1beta and nsp1beta/nsp2 were identified by protein microsequencing analysis. Time course study showed that nsp1alpha and nsp1beta mainly localize into the cell nucleus after 10 h post infection. Further analysis revealed that both proteins dramatically inhibited IFN-beta expression. The nsp1beta was observed to significantly inhibit expression from an interferon-stimulated response element promoter after Sendai virus infection or interferon treatment. It was further determined to inhibit nuclear translocation of STAT1 in the JAK-STAT signaling pathway. These results demonstrated that nsp1beta has ability to inhibit both interferon synthesis and signaling, while nsp1alpha alone strongly inhibits interferon synthesis. These findings provide important insights into mechanisms of nsp1 in PRRSV pathogenesis and its impact in vaccine development.

CCR5 serves as an essential coreceptor for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) entry, and individuals with a CCR5 D32 variant appear to be healthy, making CCR5 an attractive target for control of HIV-1 infection. The CRISPR/Cas9, which functions as a naturally existing adaptive immune system in prokaryotes, has been recently harnessed as a novel nuclease system for genome editing in mammalian cells. Although CRISPR/Cas9 can be readily delivered into cell lines, due to the large size of the Cas9 protein, efficient delivery of CCR5-targeting CRISPR/Cas9 components into primary cells, including CD4 + T-cells, the primary target for HIV-1 infection in vivo, remains a challenge. In the current study, following design of a panel of top-ranked single-guided RNAs (sgRNAs) targeting the ORF of CCR5, we demonstrate that CRISPR/Cas9 can efficiently mediate the editing of the CCR5 locus in cell lines, resulting in the knockout of CCR5 expression on the cell surface. Next-generation sequencing revealed that various mutations were introduced around the predicted cleavage site of CCR5. For each of the three most effective sgRNAs that we analysed, no significant off-target effects were detected at the 15 top-scoring potential sites. More importantly, by constructing chimeric Ad5F35 adenoviruses carrying CRISPR/Cas9 components, we efficiently transduced primary CD4 + Tlymphocytes and disrupted CCR5 expression, and the positively transduced cells were conferred with HIV-1 resistance. To our knowledge, this is the first study establishing HIV-1 resistance in primary CD4 + T-cells utilizing adenovirus-delivered CRISPR/Cas9.

We present an investigation of the decarboxylation reaction of ketoprofen (KP) induced by triplet excited-state intramolecular proton transfer in water-rich and acidic solutions. Nanosecond time-resolved resonance Raman spectroscopy results show that the decarboxylation reaction is facile in aqueous solutions with high water ratios (water/acetonitrile ≥50%) or acidic solutions with moderate and strong acid concentration. These experimental results are consistent with results from density functional theory calculations in which 1) the activation energy barriers for the triplet-state intramolecular proton transfer and associated decarboxylation process become lower when more water molecules (from one up to four molecules) are involved in the reaction system and 2) perchloric acid, sulfuric acid, and hydrochloric acid can shuttle a proton from the carboxyl to carbonyl group through an initial intramolecular proton transfer of the triplet excited state, which facilitates the cleavage of the C-C bond, thus leading to the decarboxylation reaction of triplet state KP. During the decarboxylation process, the water molecules and acid molecules may act as bridges to mediate intramolecular proton transfer for the triplet state KP when KP is irradiated by ultraviolet light in water-rich or acidic aqueous solutions and subsequently it generates a triplet-protonated carbanion biradical species. The faster generation of triplet-protonated carbanion biradical in acidic solutions than in water-rich solutions with a high water ratio is also supported by the lower activation energy barrier calculated for the acid-mediated reactions versus those of water-molecule-assisted reactions.