gms | German Medical Science

Rooted phylogenetic tree analysis recently revealed that SARS-CoV is most closely related to group 2 coronaviruses [Ref. 1].

Mouse Hepatitis Virus (MHV) has been a well-characterized model virus for studying acute and persistent group 2 coronavirus infections for more than three decades in vivo and in vitro. This makes it a safe and convenient virus to assess coronavirus-host interactions in both tissue culture systems and mouse models.

To gain better insight in the host response that plays an important role in MHV infection, global gene expression profiling analysis was performed. In two independent, highly controlled infection experiments, total RNA from MHV and mock-infected mouse fibroblasts was harvested and labelled at 3, 5 and 6 hours post infection. The labelled RNAs were hybridised on Affymetrix oligo microarrays (12450) genes. The obtained expression data were normalized and compared to their respective mock-infected controls using Rosetta Resolver for data mining and MAPPfinder for gene ontology analysis.

Our analysis indicate that at 5 and 6 hpi respectively, 29 and 226 genes were up regulated > 1.5 fold and 191 and 511 genes were down-regulated > 1.5 fold with p<0.0001.

Gene ontology analysis using MAPPfinder mapped the differentially expressed genes to functional categories including inflammatory response, MHC class I response, cholesterol synthesis, protein biosynthesis, DNA synthesis and DNA repair.

These results potentially provide a better insight in chaperones, target molecules and pathways that are potentially involved in the cellular changes during group 2 coronavirus infection. In addition, these data may implement some of the cellular targets that group 2 coronaviruses utilize to adapt their host cells in such a way that they allow for a complete viral life cycle.