Scientific Publications by FDA Staff

J Virol 2011 Jun;85(12):6082-5

Discrimination of mumps virus small hydrophobic gene deletion effects from gene translation effects on virus virulence.

Malik T, Shegogue CW, Werner K, Ngo L, Sauder C, Zhang C, Duprex WP, Rubin S

Deletion of the small hydrophobic (SH) protein of certain paramyxoviruses has been found to result in attenuation, suggesting that the SH protein is a virulence factor. To investigate the role of the mumps virus (MuV) SH protein in virulence, multiple stop codons were introduced into the ORF of a MuV molecular clone, preserving genome structure, but precluding production of the SH protein. No differences in neurovirulence were seen between the wild-type and the SHstop viruses. In contrast, upon deletion of the SH gene significant neuroattenuation was observed. These data indicate that the MuV SH protein is not a neurovirulence factor and highlight the importance of distinguishing gene deletion effects from protein-specific effects.