Project description:Purpose: to investigate occupancy of Pol II and H3K27Ac on the HCMV and cellular genomes at early times post-infection in a lytic model
Project description:We investigated the role of the chromatin remodeling protein ATRX on chromatin accessibility of HCMV genomes during the IE phase of lytic infections
Project description:DNA sequencing is a critical tool in modern biology. Over the last two decades, it has been revolutionized by the advent of massively parallel sequencing, leading to significant advances in genome and transcriptome sequencing of various organisms. Nevertheless, challenges such as accuracy, lack of competitive options and prohibitive costs associated with high throughput parallel short-read sequencing persist. Here, we conduct a comparative analysis between the Element Biosciences AVITI platform and its counterpart the Illumina NextSeq platform, testing DNA and RNA short-read sequencing, as well as synthetic long-read sequencing for single cells and RNA transcripts.
Project description:Primary infection with Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) results in a persistent lifelong infection due to its ability to establish latent infection. During productive HCMV infection, viral genes are expressed in a coordinated cascade that is characteristic of all herpesviruses and traditionally relies on the dependencies of viral genes on protein synthesis and viral DNA replication. In contrast, the transcriptional landscape associated with HCMV latency is still disputed and poorly understood. Here, we examine viral transcriptomic dynamics during the establishment of both productive and latent HCMV infections. These temporal measurements reveal that viral gene expression dynamics along productive infection and their dependencies on protein synthesis and viral DNA replication, do not fully align. This illustrates that the regulation of herpesvirus genes does not represent a simple sequential transcriptional cascade and surprisingly many viral genes are regulated by multiple independent modules. Using our improved classification of viral gene expression kinetics in conjunction with transcriptome-wide measurements of the effects of a wide array of chromatin modifiers, we unbiasedly show that a defining characteristic of latent cells is the unique repression of immediate early (IE) genes. In particular, we demonstrate that IE1 (a central IE protein) expression is the principal barrier for achieving a full productive cycle. Altogether, our findings provide an unbiased and elaborate definition of HCMV gene expression in lytic and latent infection states.
Project description:DNA sequencing is a critical tool in modern biology. Over the last two decades, it has been revolutionized by the advent of massively parallel sequencing, leading to significant advances in genome and transcriptome sequencing of various organisms. Nevertheless, challenges such as accuracy, lack of competitive options and prohibitive costs associated with high throughput parallel short-read sequencing persist. Here, we conduct a comparative analysis between the Element Biosciences AVITI platform and its counterpart the Illumina NextSeq platform, testing DNA and RNA short-read sequencing, as well as synthetic long-read sequencing for single cells and RNA transcripts.
Project description:DNA sequencing is a critical tool in modern biology. Over the last two decades, it has been revolutionized by the advent of massively parallel sequencing, leading to significant advances in genome and transcriptome sequencing of various organisms. Nevertheless, challenges such as accuracy, lack of competitive options and prohibitive costs associated with high throughput parallel short-read sequencing persist. Here, we conduct a comparative analysis between the Element Biosciences AVITI platform and its counterpart the Illumina NextSeq platform, testing DNA and RNA short-read sequencing, as well as synthetic long-read sequencing for single cells and RNA transcripts.