Project description:Human cytomegalovirus (hCMV) is a highly prevalent pathogen that, upon primary infection, establishes life-long persistence in all infected individuals. Acute hCMV infections cause a variety of diseases in humans with developmental or acquired immune deficits. In addition, persistent hCMV infection may contribute to various chronic disease conditions even in immunologically normal people. The pathogenesis of hCMV disease has been frequently linked to inflammatory host immune responses triggered by virus-infected cells. Moreover, hCMV infection activates numerous host genes many of which encode pro-inflammatory proteins. However, little is known about the relative contributions of individual viral gene products to these changes in cellular transcription. We systematically analyzed the effects of the hCMV 72-kDa immediate-early 1 (IE1) protein, a major transcriptional activator and antagonist of type I interferon (IFN) signaling, on the human transcriptome. Following expression under conditions closely mimicking the situation during productive infection, IE1 elicits a global type II IFN-like host cell response. This response is dominated by the selective up-regulation of immune stimulatory genes normally controlled by IFN-gamma and includes the synthesis and secretion of pro-inflammatory chemokines. IE1-mediated induction of IFN-stimulated genes strictly depends on tyrosine-phosphorylated signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) and correlates with the nuclear accumulation and sequence-specific binding of STAT1 to IFN-gamma-responsive promoters. However, neither synthesis nor secretion of IFN-gamma or other IFNs seems to be required for the IE1-dependent effects on cellular gene expression. Our results demonstrate that a single hCMV protein can trigger a pro-inflammatory host transcriptional response via an unexpected STAT1-dependent but IFN-independent mechanism and identify IE1 as a candidate determinant of hCMV pathogenicity. We used a total of 18 microarrays for analyzing triplicate samples each of IE1-negative control fibroblasts (TetR cells) without induction (3 arrays), fibroblasts containing inducible IE1 (TetR-IE1 cells) without induction (3 arrays), TetR cells induced for 24 h (3 arrays), TetR-IE1 cells induced for 24 h (3 arrays), TetR cells induced for 72 h (3 arrays), and TetR-IE1 cells induced for 72 h (3 arrays)

Project description:Human CMV (hCMV) establishes lifelong infections in most of us, causing developmental defects in human embryos and life-threatening disease in immunocompromised individuals. During productive infection, the viral >230,000-bp dsDNA genome is expressed widely and in a temporal cascade. The hCMV genome does not carry histones when encapsidated but has been proposed to form nucleosomes after release into the host cell nucleus. Here, we present hCMV genome-wide nucleosome occupancy and nascent transcript maps during infection of permissive human primary cells. We show that nucleosomes occupy nuclear viral DNA in a nonrandom and highly predictable fashion. At early times of infection, nucleosomes associate with the hCMV genome largely according to their intrinsic DNA sequence preferences, indicating that initial nucleosome formation is genetically encoded in the virus. However, as infection proceeds to the late phase, nucleosomes redistribute extensively to establish patterns mostly determined by nongenetic factors. We propose that these factors include key regulators of viral gene expression encoded at the hCMV major immediate-early (IE) locus. Indeed, mutant virus genomes defcient for IE1 expression exhibit globally increased nucleosome loads and reduced nucleosome dynamics compared with WT genomes. The temporal nucleosome occupancy differences between IE1-defcient and WT viruses correlate inversely with changes in the pattern of viral nascent and total transcript accumulation. These results provide a framework of spatial and temporal nucleosome organization across the genome of a major human pathogen and suggest that an hCMV major IE protein governs overall viral chromatin structure and function. [i] H3 ChIP-chip measurements of WT human cytomegalovirus (strain TB40E) following infection of MRC-5 cells. WT 8 hours postinfection, with corresponding mock IgG input control: 3 replicates; WT virus, 48 hours postinfection with corresponding mock IgG input contro: 3 replicates. [ii] MNase-chip measurements of WT and dlIE1 human cytomegalovirus nucleosomes following infection of MRC-5 cells. WT 8 hours postinfection, with corresponding sonicated DNA input control: 6 replicates; WT virus 48 hours postinfection, with corresponding sonicated DNA input control: 6 replicates; WT 96 hours postinfection, with corresponding sonicated DNA input control: 2 replicates; dlIE1 virus 8 hours postinfection, with corresponding sonicated DNA input control: 2 replicates; dlIE1 virus 96 hours postinfection, with corresponding sonicated DNA input control: 2 replicates. [iii] Total and nascent RNA measurements of WT and dlIE1 human cytomegalovirus transcripts following infection of MRC-5 cells. WT 8 hours postinfection: 2 replicates; WT virus 96 hours postinfection: 2 replicates; dlIE1 8 hours postinfection: 2 replicates; dlIE1 virus 96 hours postinfection: 2 replicates; sonicated DNA input control: 10 replicates.

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