Hepatitis E virus RNA replication polyprotein: taking structural biology seriously

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Fieulaine, Sonia | Tubiana, Thibault | Bressanelli, Stéphane

Edité par CCSD ; Frontiers Media -

International audience. Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infects approximately 20 million individuals each year allaround the world, both in developing and industrialized countries. It leads to 40,000–70,000 deaths annually, especially in immunocompromised patients and pregnant women.Despite its recognized major public health issue status and zoonotic potential, no specifictreatment is available. Indeed, HEV life cycle characterization is hampered by the lackof efficient infectious cell culture systems or in vivo models. A better knowledge of HEVvirology is therefore needed. By providing descriptions of the three-dimensional structuresof viral proteins at atomic level, structural biology can be a powerful tool to understandviral replication and help develop specific antivirals. In this comment, we describe how bothexperimental and advanced computational structural biology help to decipher HEV virologyand make a case for heeding its lessons.

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