Studies on the flavivirus nonstructural proteins and untranslated regions of the genome involved in virus replication

黄病毒引起具有全球重要性的潜在致命疾病，如黄热病、日本脑炎和登革出血热。黄病毒病在澳大利亚也很重要，该大陆北部地区经常爆发登革热、澳大利亚脑炎和最近的日本脑炎。有效疫苗仅适用于黄热病、乙脑和蜱传脑炎，并且是活疫苗或死疫苗，具有潜在危险且生产成本高昂。目前尚无针对黄病毒病的治疗药物（抗病毒药物）。为了生产安全且具有成本效益的黄病毒疫苗，并确定抗病毒药物的靶标，需要更全面地了解这些病毒如何在细胞中复制并引起疾病。本研究旨在确定目前未知的黄病毒生命周期的具体方面。

Flaviviruses cause potentially fatal diseases of global importance such as yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis (JE) and dengue haemorrhagic fever. Flavivirus disease is also important in Australia with recurrent outbreaks of dengue fever, Australian encephalitis and more recently JE in the northern regions of the continent. Effective vaccines are only available to yellow fever and JE and tick-borne encephalitis and are either live or killed preparations which are potentially hazardous and costly to produce. There are no therapeutic agents (antivirals) available against flavivirus diseases. To produce safe and cost effective vaccines against flaviviruses and to identify targets for antiviral agents, a more complete understanding of how these viruses replicate in the cell and cause disease is required. This investigation aims to define specific aspects of the flavivirus life cycle that are currently unknown.