Genome-wide analysis of viral RNA polyadenylation in Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infection

Tuesday, October 09, 2012 — Poster Session I
1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m	Natcher Conference Center, Building 45	NCI	VIROL-11

Authors

• V. Majerciak
• T. Ni
• B. Meng
• J. Zhu
• Z.M. Zheng

Abstract

Posttranscriptional polyadenylation of nascent transcripts plays a critical role in regulation of eukaryotic expression. Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is a human lymphotropic virus causing several AIDS-defined cancers. KSHV genome encodes up to 90 viral genes, but a comprehensive transcriptome of KSHV genome remains largely unknown. In this study we performed first genome-wide screening of RNA polyadenylation (pA) for KSHV transcripts in KSHV-infected B cells by RNA-seq technology. By annotation of the sequence tags against a reference KSHV genome, we determined pA sites of all viral mRNAs in strand-specific manner at a single nucleotide resolution. We found that KSHV genome utilizes a total of 66 pA sites resulting in 49 viral gene clusters. Viral transcripts originated from these gene clusters are transcribed from individual promoters, but share a single polyA site. The number of genes per cluster varies from 2-5 genes with average frequency of 1.9 genes per pA site. By analysis of sequences flanking pA sites we identified several regulatory cis-elements governing viral polyadenylation. Based on sequence abundances we also profiled utilization of each pA site at different stages of KSHV life cycle. The future studies will further extend to profile the effect of virus infection on host RNA polyadenylation.

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