Ebola virus VP35 has novel NTPase and helicase-like activities

Shu, Ting; Gan, Tianyu; Bai, Peng; Wang, Xiaotong; Qian, Qi; Zhou, Hui; Cheng, Qi; Qiu, Yang; Yin, Lei; Zhong, Jin; Zhou, Xi

Ebola virus (EBOV) is a filamentous, enveloped, nonsegmented, negative-sense RNA virus, belonging to the genus Ebolavirus in the family Filoviridae of the order Mononegavirales. EBOV is highly pathogenic, whose infection causes severe Ebola virus disease (EVD), also known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF), in humans with high mortality rates between 25 and 90% (1) (2) (3) . From 2014 to 2016, West Africa has experienced the largest Ebola outbreak in the history that has resulted in more than 28 000 cases and over 11 000 deaths (4) (https://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014west-africa/index.html). Moreover, the most recent Ebola outbreak is still on-going and deteriorating in DR Congo, which has caused 1290 EVD cases and 833 deaths until 16 April 2019 (http://www.who.int/ebola/situation-reports/ drc-2018/en/). Together with another filovirus, Marburg virus (MARV), EBOV has been classified as a Category A priority pathogen, which imposes a significant threat to global public health (https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/ emerging-infectious-diseases-pathogens). Thus far, no approved drug or vaccine is commercially available against EBOV.