Avian Influenza NS2 Proteins

Protein Information

Influenza viruses consists of three types (Influenza A, B, and C), which make up three of the five genera in the Orthomyxoviridae family. Commonly know as the flu, influenza strains can affect both birds and mammals. Influenza strains form roughly spherical particles and are similar in composition with viral envelope containing two main types of glycoproteins (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase), wrapped around the central core of the viral RNA genome and other viral proteins that package and protect the RNA. Unusually for a virus, the influenzavirus genome is not a single piece of nucleic acid; rather a seven to eight segmented fragments of negative-sense RNA with each fragment expressing different viral proteins. Influenza spreads seasonally, resulting in about three to five million yearly cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths annually or into the millions in pandemic years. Two distinct non-structural proteins NS1 and NS2 are translated from one of the eight RNA segments by using different reading frames.The influenza A virus NS2 is located in the nucleus and the cytoplasm. NS2 is essential for nuclear export of influenza virus ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes.