Decoding Human Cytomegalovirus

Overview

Journal Science

Specialty Science

Date 2012 Nov 28

PMID 23180859

Citations 373

Authors

Noam Stern-Ginossar

Ben Weisburd

Annette Michalski

Vu Thuy Khanh Le

Marco Y Hein

Sheng-Xiong Huang

Ming Ma

Ben Shen

Shu-Bing Qian

Hartmut Hengel

Matthias Mann

Nicholas T Ingolia

Jonathan S Weissman

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) genome was sequenced 20 years ago. However, like those of other complex viruses, our understanding of its protein coding potential is far from complete. We used ribosome profiling and transcript analysis to experimentally define the HCMV translation products and follow their temporal expression. We identified hundreds of previously unidentified open reading frames and confirmed a fraction by means of mass spectrometry. We found that regulated use of alternative transcript start sites plays a broad role in enabling tight temporal control of HCMV protein expression and allowing multiple distinct polypeptides to be generated from a single genomic locus. Our results reveal an unanticipated complexity to the HCMV coding capacity and illustrate the role of regulated changes in transcript start sites in generating this complexity.

Citing Articles

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