Autophagy induced by snakehead fish vesiculovirus inhibited its replication in SSN-1 cell line

• SSN-LC3B is highly conservative and could be used as a good marker for autophagy monitoring.
• SHVV infection induced autophagy in SSN-1 cells.
• Autophagy inhibited the replication of SHVV in SSN-1 cells.

Autophagy plays an important role in host protection against pathogen infection through activating innate and adaptive immunity. In the present study, we observed that the infection of snakehead fish vesiculovirus (SHVV) could induce apparent autophagy in striped snakehead fish cell line (SSN-1), including clear double-membrane vesicles, fluorescent punctate pattern of microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3B (SSN-LC3B) and the conversion of SSN-LC3B-Ⅰ to SSN-LC3B-Ⅱ. Furthermore, we verified that autophagy inhibited the replication of SHVV by assessing mRNA and protein level of nucleoprotein as well as virus titer in the supernatant. These results will shed a new light on the prevention of the infection of SHVV.