UMMS Affiliation
Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems
Publication Date
2020-11-24
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Animal Experimentation and Research | Genomics | Microbiology | Virus Diseases | Viruses
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Gene prediction, Fibroblasts, Mammalian genomics, Genomics, Urine, Macaque, DNA repair, Cytomegalovirus infection
Rights and Permissions
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.
DOI of Published Version
10.1371/journal.ppat.1008666
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
Journal/Book/Conference Title
PLoS pathogens
Related Resources
PubMed ID
33232376
Repository Citation
Taher H, E X, Kowalik TF, Malouli D. (2020). In vitro and in vivo characterization of a recombinant rhesus cytomegalovirus containing a complete genome. Open Access Publications by UMMS Authors. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1008666. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/4479
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Animal Experimentation and Research Commons, Genomics Commons, Microbiology Commons, Virus Diseases Commons, Viruses Commons
Comments
Full author list omitted for brevity. For the full list of authors, see article.