Gene expression and in vitro replication of bovine gammaherpesvirus type 4

F ROMEO; E LOUGE URIARTE; E GONZALEZ ALTAMIRANDA; S DELGADO; S PEREYRA; P MORAN ; A ODEON; S PEREZ; ANDREA E. VERNA

ARCHIVES OF VIROLOGY

SPRINGER WIEN

Lugar: Viena; Año: 2021

0304-8608

AbstractIn vitro cell cultures are widely used models for dissecting cellular and molecular mechanisms that lead to certain physiologicalconditions and diseases. The pathogenesis of BoHV-4 in the bovine reproductive tract has been studied by conductingtests on primary cultures. However, many questions remain to be answered about the role of BoHV-4 in endometrial cells.The aim of this study was to compare the replication and gene expression of BoHV-4 in cell lines and bovine reproductivetract primary cells as an in vitro model for the study of this virus. We demonstrated that BoHV-4 strains differ in their in vitrogrowth kinetics and gene expression but have the same cell type preference. Our results demonstrate that BoHV-4 replicatespreferentially in bovine endometrial cells (BEC). However, its replication capacity extends to various cell types, since allcells that were tested were permissive to BoHV-4 infection. The highest virus titers were obtained in BEC cells. Nevertheless,virus replication efficiency could not be fully predicted from the mRNA expression profiles. This implies that there aremultiple cell-type-dependent factors and strain properties that determine the level of BoHV-4 replication. The results of thisstudy provide relevant information about the in vitro behavior of two field isolates of BoHV-4 in different cell cultures. Thesefindings may be useful for the design of future in vitro experiments to obtain reliable results not only about the pathogenicrole of BoHV-4 in the bovine female reproductive tract but also in the development of efficient antiviral strategies.