Zebrafish as an animal model for the antiviral RNA interference pathway

We have evaluated the possible use of zebrafish to study antiviral RNAi with sindbis virus (SINV), vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), and nodamura virus (NoV). We find that SINV and NoV viruses induce the production of virus-derived small interfering RNAs (vsiRNAs), the hallmark of antiviral RNAi, with a preference of 22 nucleotides in length after infection of larval zebrafish. Meanwhile, the suppressor of RNAi (VSR) protein, NoV B2, may affect the accumulation of the NoV virus in zebrafish. 5 virus-derived small RNA from zebrafish infected with different viruses was detected by small RNA-seq.