Characterization of short leader and trailer RNAs synthesized by the EBOV RNA polymerase

Transcription of non-segmented negative sense (RNA viruses follows a stop-start mechanism and is thought to be initiated exclusively at the genome's very 3'-end. The synthesis of short abortive leader transcripts has been reported for some NNS viruses. We performed RNA-Seq of Ebola virus-infected and minigenome-transfected cells to evaluate the synthesis of leader transcripts and their dependence on VP30.