Candidate: Wendy Guat Hoon Tan

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Biological Sciences

Title: Comparative Genomic Analyses and Expression of a Set of Overlapping Open Reading Frames of Frog Virus 3, Type Species of Ranavirus (Family Iridoviridae)

Committee:Dr.Karim Essani, Chair
Dr. Todd Barkman
Dr. Bruce Bejcek
Dr. Rob Eversole

Date: Friday, March 17, 2006 10:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.
1718 Wood Hall

Abstract: Frog virus 3 (FV3) is the type species member of the genus Ranavirus (family Iridoviridae). To better understand the molecular mechanisms involved in the replication of FV3, including transcription of its highly methylated DNA genome, the complete nucleotide sequence of the FV3 genome has been determined. The FV3 genome is 105, 903 base pairs long excluding the terminal redundancy. The G+C content of FV3 genome is 55% and it encodes 98 non-overlapping potential open reading frames (ORFs) containing 50 to 1293 amino acids. Eighty-four ORFs have significant homology to known proteins of other iridoviruses, whereas 14 are unique FV3 ORFs. Of these, 12 ORFs do not share homology to any known proteins and only two FV3 specific ORFs shared some degree of homology with other organisms. A microsatellite containing a stretch of 34 tandemly repeated CA dinucleotide in a non-coding region was detected. To-date, no such sequence has been reported in any animal virus. A set of overlapping reading frames (ORF 55R and 55L) has also been identified and shown to express both at the RNA and protein levels by RT-PCR and baculovirus expression system. Both were classified as immediate-early genes and the function of ORF 55L protein has been shown to be a DNA nuclease.

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