engleski

Investigating the roles of host microRNAs in herpes simplex virus 1 infection

Viruses significantly perturb cell metabolism during infection enabling an efficient virus replication. Recently, it has been shown that virus infection leads also to significant changes in the expression of cellular miRNAs, which in turn might result in a favorable environment for the virus. Similar to other viruses studied thus far, herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) induces differential expression of cellular miRNA, however the exact role of such up- or down-regulation has not been elucidated. Using massive parallel sequencing, our group has observed a significant increase in the expression of certain cellular miRNA in several different cell lines and cells latently infected with the virus. Moreover, we confirmed the increase in the expression of host miRNAs by quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). These results indicate that HSV-1 has the ability to induce expression of the miRNAs to achieve optimal conditions for efficient replication ; or alternatively, the increase in expression of host miRNAs may represent a defense response to the infection. To answer these questions, we generated a set of vectors for transduction of cells to elevate the expression of miRNAs of interest, and we are currently in the process of generating stably transduced cell lines to test viral replication. The methodological approach and the technical details of the study will be presented in this paper.

host microRNAs, HSV-1

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