Biology of Circoviruses

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Circoviruses are small, non-enveloped icosahedral viruses that are important pathogens of several animal species. Infectious chicken anemia, is caused by a circovirus called chicken anemia virus (CAV). Controlling outbreaks of CAV during intensive poultry farming is costly and disruptive. Circovirus genomes are small, ranging between 1.7-2.3 kb and circular, which gives the family its name. CAV encodes only 3 open reading frames (ORFs). Pathogenicity of the virus in chickens is due to a single ORF, designated viral protein 3 (VP3), which causes extensive apoptosis in infected cells and is required for efficient viral replication. In order to understand how CAV-VP3 induces cell death, our group purified the cellular protein complexes associated with this protein and found that CAV-VP3 binds to the anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C). Several diverse types of virus including Papillomavirus, Adenovirus, Herpesvirus, Poxvirus and Circovirus have all been shown to have proteins that bind and inactivate the APC/C. Although this wide range of viruses have convergently evolved strategies to inhibit the APC/C, the functional importance of this interaction during viral replication is unknown. Continued study of the biology of CAV can therefore provide fundamental insights into general mechanisms of molecular virology and cell biology.