A Novel Persistence Associated EBV miRNA Expression Profile Is Disrupted in Neoplasia

PLoS Pathogens

Paul Murray¹  Erik Hopmans²  Jaap Middeldorp²  Michiel Pegtel²  Michael Shapiro³  David A. Thorley-Lawson³  Katherine Cosmopoulos³  Jin Qiu³ 

[1] Cancer Research UK Institute for Cancer Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom;Department of Pathology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;Dept of Pathology, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

关键词: MicroRNAs;    Viral persistence;    latency;    Biopsy;    Nasopharyngeal carcinoma;    B cells;    Principal component analysis;    Epstein-Barr virus;    Carcinomas;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.ppat.1002193

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

We have performed the first extensive profiling of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) miRNAs on in vivo derived normal and neoplastic infected tissues. We describe a unique pattern of viral miRNA expression by normal infected cells in vivo expressing restricted viral latency programs (germinal center: Latency II and memory B: Latency I/0). This includes the complete absence of 15 of the 34 miRNAs profiled. These consist of 12 BART miRNAs (including approximately half of Cluster 2) and 3 of the 4 BHRF1 miRNAs. All but 2 of these absent miRNAs become expressed during EBV driven growth (Latency III). Furthermore, EBV driven growth is accompanied by a 5–10 fold down regulation in the level of the BART miRNAs expressed in germinal center and memory B cells. Therefore, Latency III also expresses a unique pattern of viral miRNAs. We refer to the miRNAs that are specifically expressed in EBV driven growth as the Latency III associated miRNAs. In EBV associated tumors that employ Latency I or II (Burkitt's lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease, nasopharyngeal carcinoma and gastric carcinoma), the Latency III associated BART but not BHRF1 miRNAs are up regulated. Thus BART miRNA expression is deregulated in the EBV associated tumors. This is the first demonstration that Latency III specific genes (the Latency III associated BARTs) can be expressed in these tumors. The EBV associated tumors demonstrate very similar patterns of miRNA expression yet were readily distinguished when the expression data were analyzed either by heat-map/clustering or principal component analysis. Systematic analysis revealed that the information distinguishing the tumor types was redundant and distributed across all the miRNAs. This resembles “secret sharing” algorithms where information can be distributed among a large number of recipients in such a way that any combination of a small number of recipients is able to understand the message. Biologically, this may be a consequence of functional redundancy between the miRNAs.

【 授权许可】

CC BY