Conditional rather than absolute requirements of the capsid coding sequence for initiation of methionine-independent translation in Plautia stali intestine virus.

The positive-stranded RNA genome of Plautia stali intestine virus (PSIV) has an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) in an intergenic region (IGR). The IGR-IRES of PSIV initiates translation of the capsid protein by using CAA, the codon for glutamine. It was previously reported (J. Sasaki and N. Nakashima, J. Virol. 73:1219-1226, 1999) that IGR-IRES extended by several nucleotides into the capsid open reading frame (ORF). Despite the fact that the secondary structure model of the IGR-IRES is highly conserved, we were unable to find structural similarities in the 5' region of the capsid ORFs in related viruses. Therefore, we reevaluated the role of the capsid ORF in IGR-IRES-mediated translation in PSIV. Mutation of the CAA codon with various triplets did not inhibit IGR-IRES-mediated translation. N-terminal amino acid analyses of mutated products showed that the IGR-IRES could initiate translation by using various elongator tRNAs. By replacement of the capsid ORF with exogenous coding sequences having AUG deleted, translation products were produced in most cases, but capsid-exogenous fusion proteins were produced more efficiently than were the translation products. These data indicate that the 5' part of the capsid ORF is not an absolute requirement for the IGR-IRES-mediated translation. RNA structure probing analyses showed that the 5' part of the capsid ORF was a single strand, while that of exogenous reading frames was structured. Exogenous sequences also caused structural distortion in the 3' part of the IGR-IRES. We hypothesize that the single-stranded capsid ORF helps to form the tertiary structure of the IGR-IRES and facilitates precise positioning of ribosomes.