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Pesola, Jean

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Pesola

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Pesola, Jean
Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.f456b780-fe54-4d5d-8007-15a1d44e6058

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    CCCTC-Binding Factor Acts as a Heterochromatin Barrier on Herpes Simplex Viral Latent Chromatin and Contributes to Poised Latent Infection
    (American Society for Microbiology, 2018) Lee, Jennifer S.; Raja, Priya; Pan, Dongli; Pesola, Jean; Coen, Donald; Knipe, David
    ABSTRACT Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) establishes latent infection in neurons via a variety of epigenetic mechanisms that silence its genome. The cellular CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) functions as a mediator of transcriptional control and chromatin organization and has binding sites in the HSV-1 genome. We constructed an HSV-1 deletion mutant that lacked a pair of CTCF-binding sites (CTRL2) within the latency-associated transcript (LAT) coding sequences and found that loss of these CTCF-binding sites did not alter lytic replication or levels of establishment of latent infection, but their deletion reduced the ability of the virus to reactivate from latent infection. We also observed increased heterochromatin modifications on viral chromatin over the LAT promoter and intron. We therefore propose that CTCF binding at the CTRL2 sites acts as a chromatin insulator to keep viral chromatin in a form that is poised for reactivation, a state which we call poised latency.
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    A Herpesviral Lytic Protein Regulates the Structure of Latent Viral Chromatin
    (American Society for Microbiology, 2016) Raja, Priya; Lee, Jennifer; Pan, Dongli; Pesola, Jean; Coen, Donald; Knipe, David
    ABSTRACT Latent infections by viruses usually involve minimizing viral protein expression so that the host immune system cannot recognize the infected cell through the viral peptides presented on its cell surface. Herpes simplex virus (HSV), for example, is thought to express noncoding RNAs such as latency-associated transcripts (LATs) and microRNAs (miRNAs) as the only abundant viral gene products during latent infection. Here we describe analysis of HSV-1 mutant viruses, providing strong genetic evidence that HSV-infected cell protein 0 (ICP0) is expressed during establishment and/or maintenance of latent infection in murine sensory neurons in vivo. Studies of an ICP0 nonsense mutant virus showed that ICP0 promotes heterochromatin and latent and lytic transcription, arguing that ICP0 is expressed and functional. We propose that ICP0 promotes transcription of LATs during establishment or maintenance of HSV latent infection, much as it promotes lytic gene transcription. This report introduces the new concept that a lytic viral protein can be expressed during latent infection and can serve dual roles to regulate viral chromatin to optimize latent infection in addition to its role in epigenetic regulation during lytic infection. An additional implication of the results is that ICP0 might serve as a target for an antiviral therapeutic acting on lytic and latent infections.