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:Purpose: to investigate the role of the HCMV immediate early proteins in controlling the HCMV and cellular epigneomes during lytic infectioin
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: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:HCMV treated and control human primary adult neural precursor cells (isolated from hippocampus) were used at passages 2-4 for infection with HCMV and RNA was harvested at indicated times
Project description:Infection with Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) can result in either productive or non-productive infection, the latter potentially leading to establishment of latency, but the molecular factors that dictate these different infection outcomes are elusive. Macrophages are known targets of HCMV and considered to be permissive for productive infection, while monocytes, their precursors, are thought to support latent infection. Here we reveal that infection of macrophages is more complex than previously appreciated and can result in either productive or non-productive infection. By analyzing the progression of HCMV infection in c and macrophages using single cell transcriptomics, we uncover that the key characteristics that define productive and non-productive cells are the onset of viral gene expression, and activation of Interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs), respectively. We show that the level of viral gene expression, and specifically the expression of the major immediate early factor, IE1, is the principle barrier for establishing productive infection. On the cellular side, induction of ISGs in response to infection surprisingly does not dictate infection outcome, but we find that the cell intrinsic ISG levels is a main determinant of infection outcome. Indeed, intrinsic ISG level is downregulated with monocyte differentiation. We further show that, compared to monocytes, non-productive macrophages maintain slightly higher levels of viral transcripts and are able to reactivate, raising the possibility that they can serve as latency reservoirs in tissues. Moreover, we find that productive infection perturbs macrophage identity and function, likely affecting their immunological role during active infection. Overall, by harnessing the tractable system of monocyte differentiation we decipher the underlying principles that control HCMV infection outcome, and propose macrophages as a new potential HCMV reservoir in tissues.