Differential transcriptional responses to Ebola and Marburg virus infection in bat and human cells.

Abstract

The unprecedented outbreak of Ebola in West Africa resulted in over 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths, underlining the need for a better understanding of the biology of this highly pathogenic virus to develop specific counter strategies. Two filoviruses, the Ebola and Marburg viruses, result in a severe and often fatal infection in humans. However, bats are natural hosts and survive filovirus infections without obvious symptoms. The molecular basis of this striking difference in the response to filovirus infections is not well understood. We report a systematic overview of differentially expressed genes, activity motifs and pathways in human and bat cells infected with the Ebola and Marburg viruses, and we demonstrate that the replication of filoviruses is more rapid in human cells than in bat cells. We also found that the most strongly regulated genes upon filovirus infection are chemokine ligands and transcription factors. We observed a strong induction of the JAK/STAT pathway, of several genes encoding inhibitors of MAP kinases (DUSP genes) and of PPP1R15A, which is involved in ER stress-induced cell death. We used comparative transcriptomics to provide a data resource that can be used to identify cellular responses that might allow bats to survive filovirus infections.

• Authors: Martin Hölzer, Verena Krähling, Fabian Amman, Emanuel Barth, Stephan H Bernhart, Victor A O Carmelo, Maximilian Collatz, Gero Doose, Florian Eggenhofer, Jan Ewald, Jörg Fallmann, Lasse M Feldhahn, Markus Fricke, Juliane Gebauer, Andreas J Gruber, Franziska Hufsky, Henrike Indrischek, Sabina Kanton, Jörg Linde, Nelly Mostajo, Roman Ochsenreiter, Konstantin Riege, Lorena Rivarola-Duarte, Abdullah H Sahyoun, Sita J Saunders, Stefan E Seemann, Andrea Tanzer, Bertram Vogel, Stefanie Wehner, Michael T Wolfinger, Rolf Backofen, Jan Gorodkin, Ivo Grosse, Ivo Hofacker, Steve Hoffmann, Christoph Kaleta, Peter F Stadler, Stephan Becker, Manja Marz
• Journal: Scientific reports (Sci Rep) Vol. 6 Pg. 34589 (10 07 2016) ISSN: 2045-2322 [Electronic] England
• PMID: 27713552 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Topics

• Animals
• Cell Line, Tumor
• Chiroptera
• Ebolavirus (metabolism)
• Gene Expression Regulation
• Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola (metabolism)
• Humans
• Marburg Virus Disease (metabolism)
• Marburgvirus (metabolism)
• Signal Transduction
• Transcription, Genetic