Project description:This experiment is part of the project that primarily aims to utilize 3D hydrogel-based hiPSC-derived neuronal model to study rabies virus infection in the central nervous system. Having established the optimal 3D neuronal model, we then investigated the growth kinetics of two strains of rabies virus (TH and CVS-11) and comparatively analyzed the 2D and 3D culture models. We performed a gene expression analysis using NanoString to determine whether changes in gene expression could explain the differences in virus growth kinetics of two strains of rabies virus observed between the 2D and 3D neuronal culture models. Gene expression analysis of the neuropathological pathway observed during rabies virus infection demonstrated a vast number of differentially expressed genes in the 3D model as compared to the 2D model.
Project description:Street-strain rabies virus primarily replicates in central nervous system without inducing significant immune response or structural damages on neurons, but the manifested symptoms of rabies indicate inherent neuronal dysfunctions in CNS. To understand the underlying state of rabies virus-infected neurons and find probable mechanisms for the neuronal dysfunction, we performed RNA-Seq at multiple time-points. This dataset provides RNA-Seq results of wild-type and mutant rabies virus-infected neuron transcriptome, with clear differential expressions between conditions. Through comparative analysis of different time-points, we have found that the matrix protein of rabies virus plays an important role in early suppression of host gene expression and maintaining control over immune response and other processes. The signaling pathways previously known to interact with rabies virus were confirmed to be modulated in this dataset, and contribute to neuronal function-associated processes. We have verified the regulation of gene expressions that could impact neuronal functions collectively, and demonstrated in calcium imaging that indeed the oscillation of calcium trace in neurons are influenced by rabies virus infection.
Project description:Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) is a common human pathogen that establishes lifelong latency in neurons of the nervous system. The number of severe central nervous system infections caused by the virus has increased recently. However, the pathogenesis of HSV-2 infection in the nervous system is not fully understood. Here, we demonstrated global proteomic changes in the brain tissue in BALB/c mice vaginally infected with HSV-2.
Project description:Treatment for many viral infections of the central nervous system (CNS) remains only supportive. Here we address a remaining gap in our knowledge regarding how the CNS and immune systems interact during viral infection. By examining the regulation of the immune and nervous system processes in a nonhuman primate model of West Nile virus neurological disease, we show that virus infection disrupts the homeostasis of the immune-neural-synaptic axis via induction of pleiotropic genes with distinct functions in each component of the axis. This pleiotropic gene regulation suggests an unintended off-target negative impact of virus-induced host immune responses on the neurotransmission, which may be a common feature of various viral infections of the CNS.
