Description:

Title: Viral Hijacking of Host Chromatin

Speaker: Daphne Avgousti, PhD / Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Host: Virology Students and Postdocs/ Colleen Furey, Graduate Student, Coordinator

Topic:
 
The aberrant regulation of chromatin is a hallmark of many diseases and cancers. Technologies to study chromatin have advanced significantly in recent years, allowing us to progress from linear sequencing to 3D chromosome conformation studies. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that chromatin states are dynamic and respond to perturbations. Viruses have evolved to take over the cell to produce viral progeny, necessarily hijacking cellular chromatin for viral benefit, thereby providing an ideal dynamic system in which to interrogate chromatin state changes while elucidating new mechanisms of viral pathogenesis. We focus on two nuclear-replicating DNA viruses, adenovirus (Ad5) and herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), that hijack chromatin in distinct ways. Adenoviruses cause acute infections of many tissues including respiratory and GI tracts, and are used for gene therapy studies. HSV-1 is a ubiquitous human pathogen that causes recurrent cold-sores, corneal infections and herpes encephalitis and is especially problematic in neonates and immune-compromised patients. We will discuss the mechanisms of host chromatin perturbation by adenovirus and the role of histone variants during HSV-1 lytic infection.