RNA-dependent RNA polymerase sequence specificities of capsnatching viruses are tailored to aid viral replication

Influenza A virus (IAV) is a major respiratory pathogen that causes severe illness and mortality worldwide. IAV critically depends on host factors for multiple functions that are not encoded by the viral genome. Notably, the IAV RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) complex lacks intrinsic 7-methylguanosine (m7G) capping activity and instead “snatches” the 5’m7G caps and the adjacent 10-15nts of host transcripts to prime viral mRNA production, allowing viral transcripts to be recognized by the host translation machinery. We developed a new approach to simultaneously assay the 5’ ends of host and viral transcripts in infected cells and identify the host capsnatch origins for viral mRNAs. We used this technique to study the progression of IAV infection in nuclear and cytoplasmic compartiments and determined that the RdRP complex has specific sequence preferences that results in preferential capsnatching and avoidance of sub-populations of host RNAs, which can be reverted by the addition of a cap-snatch inhibitor. Notably, genes avoided by CapSnatch Seq have biological functions enriched for mRNA processing, translation, and viral replication. This selectivity and functional enrichment of avoided genes is conserved among capsnatching viruses including Influenza B Virus and Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus, despite differences in RdRP domains and subcellular locations of RNA substrates. This suggests that this preference convergently arose as a viral strategy to allow cap-snatching viruses to avoid targeting genes necessary for its own replication. This study contains 33 samples comprising capsnatch sequencing and directional RNA sequencing. Experimental setup includes extraction of RNA at various timepoints after viral infection, separation of cytosolic and nucleic extacts, treatment with capsnatch inhibitor drug or DMSO, and comparison of different viral strains.