부산대학교 도서관

Baculoviruses are insect-specific DNA viruses with a restricted host range. Two examples of such includeAutographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcMNPV) and Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV). AcMNPV is a commercially available and widely used baculovirus prototype which can infect 39 species in 13families. On the other hand, BmNPV is a major pathogen of silkworms which has developed high host specificityto Bombyx mori. Coincidentally, AcMNPV and BmNPV are highly homologous, but share no overlapping hostrange on a genomic level. In fact, these two similar viruses have extremely different infection outcomes inBombyx mori. We hypothesized that the determination of host specificity may depend on virus-host interactionsand several genes may be involved in determining host specificity. Therefore, we used next generation sequencing(NGS) to analyze transcriptome responses of hosts to these viruses. A transcriptome library was constructed,annotated, and grouped after sequence assembly. The comparison of gene expressions showed severalsignificant differences in the gene expression profiles of BmNPV and AcMNPV, especially in cases where genesinvolved with immune responses were verified by RNA interference. In addition, studies have shown that smallRNA plays a role in virus-host interaction, and further determines host specificity. Therefore, we screenedmicroRNA induced by AcMNPV infection, and then combined NGS data from cellular gens to predict possibleregulation networks. The manipulation of virus-host specificity can provide a breakthrough for the application ofbaculovirus in protein expression systems and the development of bio-control agents.