The proteome of the infectious bronchitis virus Beau-R Virion

Infectious bronchitis is a highly contagious respiratory disease of poultry caused by the coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus. It was thought that coronavirus virions were composed of three major viral structural proteins, until investigations of other coronaviruses showed that coronavirus virions also include viral non-structural and genus specific accessory proteins as well as host cell proteins. To study the proteome of IBV virions, virus was grown in embryonated chicken eggs and purified by sucrose gradient ultracentrifugation and analysed by mass spectrometry. Analysis of three preparations of purified IBV yielded the three expected structural proteins plus thirty-five additional virion-associated host proteins. Virion-associated host proteins had a diverse range of functional attributions, being involved in cytoskeleton formation, RNA binding and protein folding pathways. Some of these proteins were unique to this study, whilst others were found to be orthologous to proteins identified in SARS-CoV virions, and also virions from a number of other RNA and DNA viruses. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD002936.