Project description:We have characterized miRNAs associated with equine seminal exosomes, and identified seminal exosomes eca-mir-128 to be specifically downregulated during equine arteritis virus long-term persistent infection in the reproductive tract of the stallion
Project description:We performed whole genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) based analysis of all available Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus antigenic complex genomes and developed a high resolution genome-wide SNP microarray. We used the SNP microarray to analyze a broad panel of VEEV isolates, found excellent concordance between array and sequence based genotypes for previously sequenced strains, and genotyped unsequenced strains.
Project description:No vaccines or antivirals are approved against Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) infection in humans. To improve our understanding of VEEV-host interactions, we simultaneously profiled host transcriptome and viral RNA (vRNA) in thousands of single cells during infection of human astrocytes. Host transcription was suppressed, and “superproducer cells” with extreme vRNA abundance and altered transcriptome emerged during the first viral life cycle. Cells with increased structural-to-nonstructural transcript ratio demonstrated upregulation of trafficking genes at later time points. Loss- and gain-of-function experiments confirmed pro- and antiviral host factors. Single-cell deep sequencing analysis identified a viral E3 protein mutation altering host gene expression. Lastly, comparison with data from other viruses highlighted common and unique pathways perturbed by infection across evolutionary scales. This study provides a high-resolution characterization of the cellular response to VEEV infection, identifies candidate targets for antivirals, and establishes a comparative single-cell approach to study the evolution of virus-host interactions.
Project description:While a first draft of the equine genome is available and predictions are made regarding resulting genes and proteins, little is known about the actual transcriptome. So far, published expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from different horse tissues were generally rather short (?600bp) and hardly annotated, reflecting the problem that good cDNA libraries are very difficult to analyse. In this approach, we aimed to establish and analyse a normalised immune cell cDNA library (using freshly isolated and activated lymphocytes, NK cells, monocytes and DC). In particular, we wanted to test next generation sequencing combined with a series of bioinformatic approaches. The resulting cDNA library contained 2x107 clones of which 1056 were used for an initial Sanger sequencing and 4x106 for the deep sequencing analysis. Through the latter we obtained >29k sequences for which more than 5000 matches where found on the equine reference sequences. Additionally we could identify more than 3500 sequences which had matches on both - non-equine RNA sequences as well as the equine genome. In these we find both extensions of existing RefSeq models and novel mRNAs alike. Less than 2% of sequences did not have any match in the mentioned databases. 1 pooled set of samples from one animal analysed
