In vitro and in vivo characterization of a recombinant rhesus cytomegalovirus containing a complete genome
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Microbiology and Physiological SystemsDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2020-11-24Keywords
Gene predictionFibroblasts
Mammalian genomics
Genomics
Urine
Macaque
DNA repair
Cytomegalovirus infection
Animal Experimentation and Research
Genomics
Microbiology
Virus Diseases
Viruses
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Cytomegaloviruses (CMVs) are highly adapted to their host species resulting in strict species specificity. Hence, in vivo examination of all aspects of CMV biology employs animal models using host-specific CMVs. Infection of rhesus macaques (RM) with rhesus CMV (RhCMV) has been established as a representative model for infection of humans with HCMV due to the close evolutionary relationships of both host and virus. However, the only available RhCMV clone that permits genetic modifications is based on the 68-1 strain which has been passaged in fibroblasts for decades resulting in multiple genomic changes due to tissue culture adaptations. As a result, 68-1 displays reduced viremia in RhCMV-naive animals and limited shedding compared to non-clonal, low passage isolates. To overcome this limitation, we used sequence information from primary RhCMV isolates to construct a full-length (FL) RhCMV by repairing all mutations affecting open reading frames (ORFs) in the 68-1 bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC). Inoculation of adult, immunocompetent, RhCMV-naive RM with the reconstituted virus resulted in significant viremia in the blood similar to primary isolates of RhCMV and furthermore led to high viral genome copy numbers in many tissues at day 14 post infection. In contrast, viral dissemination was greatly reduced upon deletion of genes also lacking in 68-1. Transcriptome analysis of infected tissues further revealed that chemokine-like genes deleted in 68-1 are among the most highly expressed viral transcripts both in vitro and in vivo consistent with an important immunomodulatory function of the respective proteins. We conclude that FL-RhCMV displays in vitro and in vivo characteristics of a wildtype virus while being amenable to genetic modifications through BAC recombineering techniques.Source
Taher H, Mahyari E, Kreklywich C, Uebelhoer LS, McArdle MR, Moström MJ, Bhusari A, Nekorchuk M, E X, Whitmer T, Scheef EA, Sprehe LM, Roberts DL, Hughes CM, Jackson KA, Selseth AN, Ventura AB, Cleveland-Rubeor HC, Yue Y, Schmidt KA, Shao J, Edlefsen PT, Smedley J, Kowalik TF, Stanton RJ, Axthelm MK, Estes JD, Hansen SG, Kaur A, Barry PA, Bimber BN, Picker LJ, Streblow DN, Früh K, Malouli D. In vitro and in vivo characterization of a recombinant rhesus cytomegalovirus containing a complete genome. PLoS Pathog. 2020 Nov 24;16(11):e1008666. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008666. PMID: 33232376; PMCID: PMC7723282. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.1371/journal.ppat.1008666Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/41689PubMed ID
33232376Notes
Full author list omitted for brevity. For the full list of authors, see article.
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Copyright: © 2020 Taher et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Distribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1371/journal.ppat.1008666
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright: © 2020 Taher et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.