Molecular characterization of chilo iridescent virus 458R open reading frame

Chilo iridescent virus (CIV), belongs to genus Iridovirus of family Iridoviridae, is an insect virus possessing potential use as biocontrol agent. Also, this virus has potential to be utilized for vaccine development and therapeutic purposes. Efficient utilization of the virus for these purposes can be possible by analyzing the virus at molecular level. As a result of the bioinformatics analysis and literature research performed within the scope of this thesis, it is thought that 458R gene encoded by CIV may be playing role in one or more steps such as attachment, entering to the cell, viral replication and/or virion assemble process. For functional analysis of the gene, the transcriptional analysis of 458R and determination of the untranslated regions of synthesized mRNA were determined in this thesis. In a consequence of these study, it was determined that 458R is a late gene and transcription of the gene is started between 12 and 24. hours post infection. It was determined that 5′ untranslated region is located at the 53 nucleotides upstream of start codon of mRNA and 3′ untranslated region is located at the 40 nucleotides downstream of stop codon of mRNA. In this study, transcriptional analysis of an open reading frame, playing a role in CIV infection and/or new virion formation, was carried out.