Zoonotic viruses: The jump from animals to humans and a possible mechanism for RNA editing?

Zoonosis is any infectious disease that may be transmitted from animals to human. Some may wonder what are the exact mechanisms that made the virus jump from infecting animals to infecting humans.

There are a number of studies directed at elucidating the role of RNA editing of viral genes. It was found that RNA editing at the amber/W site plays a central role in the replication scheme of the Hepatitis Delta Virus (Casey, 2002). RNA editing was also found to have downregulated the cytotoxicity of Ebola (Volchkov, 2001). In fact, RNA editing was proposed to have occurred in the case of HIV, where there are changes in the viral proteins but no changes in the RNA viral genome that is packaged within the viral particles (Berkhout, 2001 and Bourara, 2000). Thus, the question that remains could be if RNA editing in an animal host results in the synthesis of viral proteins and structurally different viral particles that makes the virus capable of being pathogens in humans and a similar RNA editing mechanism in infected humans lead to other humans being infected too?

Citations

1) Casey JL. RNA editing in hepatitis delta virus genotype III requires a branched double-hairpin RNA structure. J Virol. 2002 Aug;76(15):7385-97.

2) Volchkov VE, Volchkova VA, Muhlberger E, Kolesnikova LV, Weik M, Dolnik O, Klenk HD. Recovery of infectious Ebola virus from complementary DNA: RNA editing of the GP gene and viral cytotoxicity. Science. 2001 Mar 9;291(5510):1965-9.

3) Berkhout B, Das AT, Beerens N. HIV-1 RNA editing, hypermutation, and error-prone reverse transcription. Science. 2001 Apr 6;292(5514):7.

4) Bourara K, Litvak S, Araya A. Generation of G-to-A and C-to-U changes in HIV-1 transcripts by RNA editing. Science. 2000 Sep 1;289(5484):1564-6.