Neurologic Alterations Due to Respiratory Virus Infections

Bohmwald, Karen; Gálvez, Nicolás M. S.; Ríos, Mariana; Kalergis, Alexis M.

CoVs are enveloped viruses with a positive non-segmented single-stranded RNA genome of about 30 Kb of length, one of the largest among the RNA viruses. They codify for four structural proteins-five in the case of some BCoV-and several non-structural proteins comprised mainly on two ORFs (ORF1a and ORF1b) that will eventually be cleaved into 15 or 16 proteins (Desforges et al., 2014b) . It has been described that non-structural proteins are the leading cause of host immune system modulation and they also play a role in the replication of the genetic material of the virus (Gorbalenya et al., 2006) . As described in mice, viral entry is mediated through the interaction of viral Spike (S) protein and cellular CECAM-1 receptor, along with other co-receptors (Williams et al., 1990; Bergmann et al., 2006) . From there, the virus can replicate its RNA and translate it into proteins. Among the cells that are permissive to MHV infection are macrophages, microglia and astrocytes (Bergmann et al., 2006; Jacomy et al., 2006) . Remarkably, the year 2006 St-Jean et al. (2006 described the recovery of an infectious HCoV-OC43 with neurovirulent capacities from a full-length cDNA clone inserted in a BAC, with the same phenotype as a WT virus, generating an interesting methodological approach for the study of this virus.