Ying Ye

Publications (2)10.56 Total impact

• Source

  Available from: Dat Tran

  Article: Cyclic and acyclic defensins inhibit human immunodeficiency virus type-1 replication by different mechanisms.

  Aprille Seidel, Ying Ye, Lesley R de Armas, Maira Soto, William Yarosh, Renee A Marcsisin, Dat Tran, Michael E Selsted, David Camerini
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  ABSTRACT: Defensins are antimicrobial peptides expressed by plants and animals. In mammals there are three subfamilies of defensins, distinguished by structural features: alpha, beta and theta. Alpha and beta-defensins are linear peptides with broad anti-microbial activity that are expressed by many mammals including humans. In contrast, theta-defensins are cyclic anti-microbial peptides made by several non-human primates but not humans. All three defensin types have anti-HIV-1 activity, but their mechanisms of action differ. We studied the anti-HIV-1 activity of one defensin from each group, HNP-1 (alpha), HBD-2 (beta) and RTD-1 (theta). We examined how each defensin affected HIV-1 infection and demonstrated that the cyclic defensin RTD-1 inhibited HIV-1 entry, while acyclic HNP-1 and HBD-2 inhibited HIV-1 replication even when added 12 hours post-infection and blocked viral replication after HIV-1 cDNA formation. We further found that all three defensins downmodulated CXCR4. Moreover, RTD-1 inactivated X4 HIV-1, while HNP-1 and HBD-2 inactivated both X4 and R5 HIV-1. The data presented here show that acyclic and cyclic defensins block HIV-1 replication by shared and diverse mechanisms. Moreover, we found that HNP-1 and RTD-1 directly inhibited firefly luciferase enzymatic activity, which may affect the interpretation of previously published data.
  PLoS ONE 01/2010; 5(3):e9737. · 4.09 Impact Factor
• Source

  Available from: PubMed Central

  Article: DBR1 siRNA inhibition of HIV-1 replication.

  Ying Ye, Jessica De Leon, Noriko Yokoyama, Yathi Naidu, David Camerini
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  ABSTRACT: HIV-1 and all retroviruses are related to retroelements of simpler organisms such as the yeast Ty elements. Recent work has suggested that the yeast retroelement Ty1 replicates via an unexpected RNA lariat intermediate in cDNA synthesis. The putative genomic RNA lariat intermediate is formed by a 2'-5' phosphodiester bond, like that found in pre-mRNA intron lariats and it facilitates the minus-strand template switch during cDNA synthesis. We hypothesized that HIV-1 might also form a genomic RNA lariat and therefore that siRNA-mediated inhibition of expression of the human RNA lariat de-branching enzyme (DBR1) expression would specifically inhibit HIV-1 replication. We designed three short interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules targeting DBR1, which were capable of reducing DBR1 mRNA expression by 80% and did not significantly affect cell viability. We assessed HIV-1 replication in the presence of DBR1 siRNA and found that DBR1 knockdown led to decreases in viral cDNA and protein production. These effects could be reversed by cotransfection of a DBR1 cDNA indicating that the inhibition of HIV-1 replication was a specific effect of DBR1 underexpression. These data suggest that DBR1 function may be needed to debranch a putative HIV-1 genomic RNA lariat prior to completion of reverse transcription.
  Retrovirology 02/2005; 2:63. · 6.47 Impact Factor