Viral infections can lead to interferon production, which achieves its antiviral function primarily by activating the JAK/STAT pathway and inducing multiple interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs). Although considerable ISGs have been identified in antiviral researches, little is known about ISGs in bluetongue virus (BTV) infection. Viperin is the most highly induced ISG following BTV infection, which suggests that it may play a critical role in the anti-BTV immune response. The aim of this study was to characterize ovine Viperin (oViperin) and explore whether it can inhibit BTV replication. We cloned the coding sequences (CDS) of sheep Viperin, and the sequence analysis showed that oViperin displayed a high similarity with other species. oViperin has a leucine zipper in the N-terminal, a CxxxCxxC motif in the SAM domain, and a conservative C-terminus. We found that oViperin mRNA expression was significantly up-regulated in a time- and multiplicity of infection (MOI)-dependent manner following BTV infection. oViperin overexpression resulted in a significant inhibition in BTV replication, whereas an oViperin knockdown in MDOK cells increased BTV replication. This study shows for the first time, that oViperin has antiviral activity towards BTV infection and provides important information to research the interaction between BTV and oViperin.

病毒感染可导致干扰素产生，主要通过激活JAK / STAT途径并诱导多个干扰素刺激基因（ISG）来实现其抗病毒功能。尽管在抗病毒研究中已鉴定出大量的ISG，但对于蓝舌病病毒（BTV）感染中的ISG知之甚少。毒蛇蛋白是BTV感染后诱导程度最高的ISG，这表明它可能在抗BTV免疫反应中起关键作用。这项研究的目的是表征绵羊Viperin（oViperin），并探讨其是否可以抑制BTV复制。我们克隆了绵羊Viperin的编码序列（CDS），并且序列分析表明oViperin与其他物种具有高度相似性。oViperin在N端具有亮氨酸拉链，在SAM域中具有CxxxCxxC基序，并且具有保守的C端。我们发现，oViperin mRNA表达在BTV感染后以时间和感染复数（MOI）依赖性方式显着上调。oViperin的过表达导致BTV复制的显着抑制，而MDOK细胞中oViperin的敲低增加了BTV的复制。这项研究首次表明，oViperin对BTV感染具有抗病毒活性，并为研究BTV与oViperin之间的相互作用提供了重要信息。