scholarly journals Multidimensional analysis of Gammaherpesvirus RNA expression reveals unexpected heterogeneity of gene expression

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren M. Oko ◽  
Abigail K. Kimball ◽  
Rachael E. Kaspar ◽  
Ashley N. Knox ◽  
Carrie B. Coleman ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTVirus-host interactions are frequently studied in bulk cell populations, obscuring cell-to-cell variation. Here we investigate endogenous herpesvirus gene expression at the single-cell level, combining a sensitive and robust fluorescent in situ hybridization platform with multiparameter flow cytometry, to study the expression of gammaherpesvirus non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) during lytic replication, latent infection and reactivation in vitro. This method allowed robust detection of viral ncRNAs of murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (γHV68), Kaposi’s sarcoma associated herpesvirus and Epstein-Barr virus, revealing variable expression at the single-cell level. By quantifying the inter-relationship of viral ncRNA, viral mRNA, viral protein and host mRNA regulation during γHV68 infection, we find heterogeneous and asynchronous gene expression during latency and reactivation, with reactivation from latency identified by a distinct gene expression profile within rare cells. Further, during lytic replication with γHV68, we find many cells have limited viral gene expression, with only a fraction of cells showing robust gene expression, dynamic RNA localization, and progressive infection. Lytic viral gene expression was enhanced in primary fibroblasts and by conditions associated with enhanced viral replication, with multiple subpopulations of cells present in even highly permissive infection conditions. These findings, powered by single-cell analysis integrated with automated clustering algorithms, suggest inefficient or abortive γHV infection in many cells, and identify substantial heterogeneity in viral gene expression at the single-cell level.AUTHOR SUMMARYThe gammaherpesviruses are a group of DNA tumor viruses that establish lifelong infection. How these viruses infect and manipulate cells has frequently been studied in bulk populations of cells. While these studies have been incredibly insightful, there is limited understanding of how virus infection proceeds within a single cell. Here we present a new approach to quantify gammaherpesvirus gene expression at the single-cell level. This method allows us to detect cell-to-cell variation in the expression of virus non-coding RNAs, an important and understudied class of RNAs which do not encode for proteins. By examining multiple features of virus gene expression, this method further reveals significant variation in infection between cells across multiple stages of infection, even in conditions generally thought to be highly uniform. These studies emphasize that gammaherpesvirus infection can be surprisingly heterogeneous when viewed at the level of the individual cell. Because this approach can be broadly applied across diverse viruses, this study affords new opportunities to understand the complexity of virus infection within single cells.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shilo Rosenwasser ◽  
Miguel J. Frada ◽  
David Pilzer ◽  
Ron Rotkopf ◽  
Assaf Vardi

AbstractMarine viruses are major evolutionary and biogeochemical drivers of microbial life in the ocean. Host response to viral infection typically includes virus-induced rewiring of metabolic network to supply essential building blocks for viral assembly, as opposed to activation of anti-viral host defense. Nevertheless, there is a major bottleneck to accurately discern between viral hijacking strategies and host defense responses when averaging bulk population response. Here we use Emiliania huxleyi, a bloom-forming alga and its specific virus (EhV), as one of the most ecologically important host-virus model system in the ocean. Using automatic microfluidic setup to capture individual algal cells, we quantified host and virus gene expression on a single-cell resolution during the course of infection. We revealed high heterogeneity in viral gene expression among individual cells. Simultaneous measurements of expression profiles of host and virus genes at a single-cell level allowed mapping of infected cells into newly defined infection states and uncover a yet unrecognized early phase in host response that occurs prior to viral expression. Intriguingly, resistant cells emerged during viral infection, showed unique expression profiles of metabolic genes which can provide the basis for discerning between viral resistant and sensitive cells within heterogeneous populations in the marine environment. We propose that resolving host-virus arms race at a single-cell level will provide important mechanistic insights into viral life cycles and will uncover host defense strategies.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Cristobal Vera ◽  
Jiayi Sun ◽  
Yen Ting Lin ◽  
Jenny Drnevich ◽  
Ruian Ke ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTViral infection outcomes are governed by the complex and dynamic interplay between the infecting virus population and the host response. It is increasingly clear that both viral and host cell populations are highly heterogeneous, but little is known about how this heterogeneity influences infection dynamics or viral pathogenicity. To dissect the interactions between influenza A virus (IAV) and host cell heterogeneity, we examined the combined host and viral transcriptomes of thousands of individual, single virion-infected cells. We observed complex patterns of viral gene expression and the existence of multiple distinct host transcriptional responses to infection at the single cell level. Our analyses reveal that viral NS segment gene expression diverges from that of the rest of the viral genome within a subset of infected cells, and that this unique pattern of NS segment expression can play a dominant role in shaping the host cell response to infection. Finally, we show that seasonal human H1N1 and H3N2 strains differ significantly in patterns of host anti-viral gene transcriptional heterogeneity at the single cell level. Altogether, these data reveal a common pattern of viral gene expression heterogeneity across human IAV subtypes that can serve as a major determinant of antiviral gene activation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer N. Berger ◽  
Bridget Sanford ◽  
Abigail K. Kimball ◽  
Lauren M. Oko ◽  
Rachael E. Kaspar ◽  
...  

SUMMARYVirus infection is frequently characterized using bulk cell populations. How these findings correspond to infection in individual cells remains unclear. Here, we integrate high-dimensional single-cell approaches to quantify viral and host RNA and protein expression signatures using de novo infection with a well-characterized model gammaherpesvirus. While infected cells demonstrated genome-wide transcription, individual cells revealed pronounced variation in gene expression, with only 9 of 80 annotated viral open reading frames uniformly expressed in all cells, and a 1000-fold variation in viral RNA expression between cells. Single-cell analysis further revealed positive and negative gene correlations, many uniquely present in a subset of cells. Beyond variation in viral gene expression, individual cells demonstrated a pronounced, dichotomous signature in host gene expression, revealed by measuring host RNA abundance and post-translational protein modifications. These studies provide a resource for the high-dimensional analysis of virus infection, and a conceptual framework to define virus infection as the sum of virus and host responses at the single-cell level.HIGHLIGHTSCyTOF and scRNA-seq identify wide variation in gene expression between infected cells.Host RNA expression and post-translational modifications stratify virus infection.Single cell RNA analysis reveals new relationships in viral gene expression.Simultaneous measurement of virus and host defines distinct infection states.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Alvarado-Hernandez ◽  
Yanping Ma ◽  
Nishi R. Sharma ◽  
Vladimir Majerciak ◽  
Alexei Lobanov ◽  
...  

Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) ORF57 is an RNA-binding post-transcriptional regulator. We recently applied an affinity-purified anti-ORF57 antibody to conduct ORF57-CLIP (Cross-linking Immunoprecipitation) in combination with RNA-sequencing (CLIP-seq) and analyzed the genome-wide host RNA transcripts in association with ORF57 in BCBL-1 cells with lytic KSHV infection. Mapping of the CLIPed RNA reads to the human genome (GRCh37) revealed that most of the ORF57-associated RNA reads were from rRNAs. The remaining RNA reads mapped to several classes of host non-coding and protein-coding mRNAs. We found ORF57 binds and regulates expression of a subset of host lncRNAs, including LINC00324, LINC00355, and LINC00839 which are involved in cell growth. ORF57 binds snoRNAs responsible for 18S and 28S rRNA modifications, but does not interact with fibrillarin and NOP58. We validated ORF57 interactions with 67 snoRNAs by ORF57-RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP)-snoRNA-array assays. Most of the identified ORF57 rRNA binding sites (BS) overlap with the sites binding snoRNAs. We confirmed ORF57-snoRA71B RNA interaction in BCBL-1 cells by ORF57-RIP and Northern blot analyses using a 32 P-labeled oligo probe from the 18S rRNA region complementary to snoRA71B. Using RNA oligos from the rRNA regions that ORF57 binds for oligo pulldown-Western blot assays, we selectively verified ORF57 interactions with 5.8S and 18S rRNAs. Polysome profiling revealed that ORF57 associates with both monosomes and polysomes and its association with polysomes increases PABPC1 binding to, but prevent Ago2 from polysomes. Our data indicate a functional correlation with ORF57 binding and suppression of Ago2 activities for ORF57 promotion of gene expression. Significance As an RNA-binding protein, KSHV ORF57 regulates RNA splicing, stability, and translation and inhibits host innate immunity by blocking the formation of RNA granules in virus infected cells. In this report, ORF57 was found to interact many host non-coding RNAs, including lncRNAs, snoRNAs and ribosomal RNAs to carry out additional unknown functions. ORF57 binds a group of lncRNAs via the identified RNA motifs by ORF57 CLIP-seq to regulate their expression. ORF57 associates with snoRNAs independently of fibrillarin and NOP58 proteins, and with ribosomal RNA in the regions that commonly bind snoRNAs. Knockdown of fibrillarin expression decreases the expression of snoRNAs and CDK4, but not affect viral gene expression. More importantly, we found that ORF57 binds translationally active polysomes and enhances PABPC-1 but prevents Ago2 association with polysomes. Data provide a compelling evidence on how ORF57 in KSHV infected cells might regulate protein synthesis by blocking Ago2’s hostile activities on translation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 10539-10539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Chieh Wang ◽  
Daniel Ramskold ◽  
Shujun Luo ◽  
Robin Li ◽  
Qiaolin Deng ◽  
...  

10539 Background: Melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer. Late-stage melanoma is highly metastatic and currently lacks effective treatment. This discouraging clinical observation highlights the need for a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying melanoma initiation and progression and for developing new therapeutic approaches based on novel targets. Although genome-wide transcriptome analyses have been frequently used to study molecular alterations in clinical samples, it has been technically challenging to obtain the transcriptomic profiles at single-cell level. Methods: Using antibody-mediated magnetic activated cell separation (MACS), we isolated and individualized putative circulating melanoma cells (CMCs) from the blood samples of the melanoma patients at advance stages. The transcriptomic analysis based on a novel and robust mRNA-Seq protocol (Smart-Seq) was established and applied to the putative CMCs for single-cell profiling. Results: We have discovered distinct gene expression patterns, including new putative markers for CMCs. Meanwhile, the gene expression profiles derived of the CMC candidates isolated from the patient’s blood samples are closely-related to the expression profiles of other cells originated from human melanocytes, including normal melanocytes in primary culture and melanoma cell lines. Compared with existing methods, Smart-Seq has improved read coverage across transcripts, which provides advantage for better analyzing transcript isoforms and SNPs. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the techniques developed in this research for cell isolation and transcriptomic analyses can potentially be used for addressing many biological and clinical questions requiring genomewide transcriptome profiling in rare cells.


RSC Advances ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 4886-4893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Sun ◽  
Tim Olsen ◽  
Jing Zhu ◽  
Jianguo Tao ◽  
Brian Ponnaiya ◽  
...  

Gene expression analysis at the single-cell level is critical to understanding variations among cells in heterogeneous populations.


2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 2055-2067 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yousang Gwack ◽  
Hwa Jin Baek ◽  
Hiroyuki Nakamura ◽  
Sun Hwa Lee ◽  
Michael Meisterernst ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT An important step in the herpesvirus life cycle is the switch from latency to lytic reactivation. The RTA transcription activator of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) acts as a molecular switch for lytic reactivation. Here we demonstrate that KSHV RTA recruits CBP, the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex, and the TRAP/Mediator coactivator into viral promoters through interactions with a short acidic sequence in the carboxyl region and that this recruitment is essential for RTA-dependent viral gene expression. The Brg1 subunit of SWI/SNF and the TRAP230 subunit of TRAP/Mediator were shown to interact directly with RTA. Consequently, genetic ablation of these interactions abolished KSHV lytic replication. These results demonstrate that the recruitment of CBP, SWI/SNF, and TRAP/Mediator complexes by RTA is the principal mechanism to direct well-controlled viral gene expression and thereby viral lytic reactivation.


1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 1619-1624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Emilie ◽  
Michel Peuchmaur ◽  
Marc Barad ◽  
HéLèNe Jouin ◽  
Marie-Christine Maillot ◽  
...  

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