Gene expression and in vitro replication of bovine gammaherpesvirus type 4

ROMEO, F.; LOUGE-URIARTE, E.; GONZALEZ-ALTAMIRANDA, E.; DELGADO, S.; PEREYRA, S.; MORÁN, P.; ODEÓN, A.; PÉREZ, S.; VERNA, ANDREA E.

ARCHIVES OF VIROLOGY

SPRINGER WIEN

Año: 2021

0304-8608

In vitro cell cultures are widely used models for dissecting cellular and molecular mechanisms that lead to certain physiological conditions and diseases. The pathogenesis of BoHV-4 in the bovine reproductive tract has been studied by conducting tests 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 reproductive tract primary cells as an in vitro model for the study of this virus. We demonstrated that BoHV-4 strains difer in their in vitro growth kinetics and gene expression but have the same cell type preference. Our results demonstrate that BoHV-4 replicates preferentially in bovine endometrial cells (BEC). However, its replication capacity extends to various cell types, since all cells that were tested were permissive to BoHV-4 infection. The highest virus titers were obtained in BEC cells. Nevertheless, virus replication efciency could not be fully predicted from the mRNA expression profles. This implies that there are multiple cell-type-dependent factors and strain properties that determine the level of BoHV-4 replication. The results of this study provide relevant information about the in vitro behavior of two feld isolates of BoHV-4 in diferent cell cultures. These fndings may be useful for the design of future in vitro experiments to obtain reliable results not only about the pathogenic role of BoHV-4 in the bovine female reproductive tract but also in the development of efcient antiviral strategies