Project description:Influenza A virus (IAV) is a segmented negative-sense RNA virus and is the cause of major global epidemics and pandemics. The replication of IAV is complex, involving both transcription and replication, during which three distinct RNA species, namely mRNA, cRNA, and vRNA are generated for all eight genome segments. While understanding IAV replication kinetics is important for drug development and improving vaccine production, current methods for studying IAV kinetics has been limited by the ability to detect all three different RNA species in a scalable manner. Here were report the development of a novel pipeline using total stranded RNA-Seq, named Influenza Virus Enumerator of RNA Transcripts (InVERT) which allows for the simultaneous quantification of all three RNA species of IAV. Using InVERT provides a full landscape of the IAV replication kinetics, in which we found that different groups of viral genes followed different traits of kinetics. During a cycle of infection, the RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase (RdRP) produced more vRNA than mRNA while some other genes (NP, NS, HA) consistently make more mRNA than vRNA. vRNA expression levels do not correlate with the cRNA expression, suggesting complex regulations of vRNA synthesis. Furthermore, by studying the kinetics of a virus lacking the capacity to generate new polymerase complexes, we found evidence that further supports the model that cRNA synthesis requires newly synthesized RdRP and that incoming RdRP can only generate mRNA.
Project description:A century ago, influenza A virus (IAV) infection caused the 1918 flu pandemic and killed an estimated 20-40 million people. Pandemic IAV outbreaks occur when strains from animal reservoirs acquire the ability to infect and spread among humans. The molecular details of this species barrier are incompletely understood. We combined metabolic pulse labeling and quantitative shotgun proteomics to globally monitor protein synthesis upon infection of human cells with a human- and a bird-adapted IAV strain. While production of host proteins was remarkably similar, we observed striking differences in the kinetics of viral protein synthesis over the course of infection. Most importantly, the matrix protein M1 was inefficiently produced by the bird-adapted strain at later stages. We show that impaired production of M1 from bird-adapted strains is caused by increased splicing of the M segment RNA to alternative isoforms. Experiments with reporter constructs and recombinant influenza viruses revealed that strain-specific M segment splicing is controlled by the 3’ splice site and functionally important for permissive infection. Independent in silico and biochemical evidence shows that avian-adapted M segments have evolved different conserved RNA structure features than human-adapted sequences. Thus, our data identifies M segment RNA splicing as a viral determinant of host range.
Project description:A century ago, influenza A virus (IAV) infection caused the 1918 flu pandemic and killed an estimated 20-40 million people. Pandemic IAV outbreaks occur when strains from animal reservoirs acquire the ability to infect and spread among humans. The molecular details of this species barrier are incompletely understood. We combined metabolic pulse labeling and quantitative shotgun proteomics to globally monitor protein synthesis upon infection of human cells with a human- and a bird-adapted IAV strain. While production of host proteins was remarkably similar, we observed striking differences in the kinetics of viral protein synthesis over the course of infection. Most importantly, the matrix protein M1 was inefficiently produced by the bird-adapted strain at later stages. We show that impaired production of M1 from bird-adapted strains is caused by increased splicing of the M segment RNA to alternative isoforms. Experiments with reporter constructs and recombinant influenza viruses revealed that strain-specific M segment splicing is controlled by the 3’ splice site and functionally important for permissive infection. Independent in silico and biochemical evidence shows that avian-adapted M segments have evolved different conserved RNA structure features than human-adapted sequences. Thus, our data identifies M segment RNA splicing as a viral determinant of host range.
Project description:Segment 3 of influenza A virus contains a second open reading frame accessed via robosomal frameshifting. The frameshift product, PA-Z, comprises the endonuclease domain of viral PA protein with C-terminal demain encoded by the X-ORF and functions to repress cellular gene expression. PA-X also modulates IAV virulence in a mouse infection model. The effect of PA-X deltions were examined using 2 separate mutant influenza viruses (1918-FS/1918-PCT1) and the results compared to wild-type 1918 influenza virus. Balb/c mice were infected and samples harvested at days 3, 5 and 8 days. Four animals/condition were used. Gene expression levels from infected animals were compared to mock animals.
Project description:Segment 3 of influenza A virus contains a second open reading frame accessed via robosomal frameshifting. The frameshift product, PA-Z, comprises the endonuclease domain of viral PA protein with C-terminal demain encoded by the X-ORF and functions to repress cellular gene expression. PA-X also modulates IAV virulence in a mouse infection model.
Project description:Heldt2012 - Influenza Virus Replication
The model describes the life cycle of influenza A virus in a mammalian cell including the following steps: attachment of parental virions to the cell membrane, receptor-mediated endocytosis, fusion of the virus envelope with the endosomal membrane, nuclear import of vRNPs, viral transcription and replication, translation of the structural viral proteins, nuclear export of progeny vRNPs and budding of new virions. It also explicitly accounts for the stabilization of cRNA by viral polymerases and NP and the inhibition of vRNP activity by M1 protein binding. In short, the model focuses on the molecular mechanism that controls viral transcription and replication.
This model is described in the article:
Modeling the intracellular dynamics of influenza virus replication to understand the control of viral RNA synthesis.
Heldt FS, Frensing T, Reichl U.
J Virol.
Abstract:
Influenza viruses transcribe and replicate their negative-sense RNA genome inside the nucleus of host cells via three viral RNA species. In the course of an infection, these RNAs show distinct dynamics, suggesting that differential regulation takes place. To investigate this regulation in a systematic way, we developed a mathematical model of influenza virus infection at the level of a single mammalian cell. It accounts for key steps of the viral life cycle, from virus entry to progeny virion release, while focusing in particular on the molecular mechanisms that control viral transcription and replication. We therefore explicitly consider the nuclear export of viral genome copies (vRNPs) and a recent hypothesis proposing that replicative intermediates (cRNA) are stabilized by the viral polymerase complex and the nucleoprotein (NP). Together, both mechanisms allow the model to capture a variety of published data sets at an unprecedented level of detail. Our findings provide theoretical support for an early regulation of replication by cRNA stabilization. However, they also suggest that the matrix protein 1 (M1) controls viral RNA levels in the late phase of infection as part of its role during the nuclear export of viral genome copies. Moreover, simulations show an accumulation of viral proteins and RNA toward the end of infection, indicating that transport processes or budding limits virion release. Thus, our mathematical model provides an ideal platform for a systematic and quantitative evaluation of influenza virus replication and its complex regulation.
With the current parameter set, the model reproduces an infection at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 10. Figure 2A of the paper is reproduced here, with parameters kDegRnp and kSynP changed to zeros.
Initial conditions and parameter changes that were used to obtain specific figures in the article can be found in Table A2.
The model has the correct value for kAttLo as 4.55e-04. The value of this parameter mentioned as 4.55e-02 in Table 1 of the paper is incorrect. This is checked with the author.
This model is hosted on BioModels Database
and identified
by: MODEL1307270000
.
To cite BioModels Database, please use: BioModels Database: An enhanced, curated and annotated resource
for published quantitative kinetic models
.
To the extent possible under law, all copyright and related or
neighbouring rights to this encoded model have been dedicated to the public
domain worldwide. Please refer to CC0 Public Domain
Dedication
for more information.
Project description:Arginase 1 (Arg1), the enzyme catalyzing the conversion of arginine to ornithine, is a hallmark of IL-10-producing immunoregulatory M2 macrophages. However, its expression in T cells is disputed. Here, we demonstrate that induction of Arg1 expression is a key feature of lung CD4+ T cells during mouse in vivo influenza infection. Conditional ablation of Arg1 in CD4+ T cells accelerated both virus-specific T helper 1 (Th1) effector responses and its resolution, resulting in efficient viral clearance and reduced lung pathology. Using unbiased transcriptomics and metabolomics, we found that Arg1-deficiency was distinct from Arg2-deficiency and caused altered glutamine metabolism. Rebalancing this perturbed glutamine flux normalized the cellular Th1 response. CD4+ T cells from rare ARG1-deficient patients or CRISPR-Cas9-mediated ARG1-deletion in healthy donor cells phenocopied the murine cellular phenotype. Collectively, CD4+ T cell-intrinsic Arg1 functions as an unexpected rheostat regulating the kinetics of the mammalian Th1 lifecycle with implications for Th1-associated tissue pathologies.