Nucleosome maps of the human cytomegalovirus genome reveal a temporal switch in chromatin organization linked to a major IE protein

Edited by Thomas Shenk, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved June 27, 2013 (received for review March 25, 2013)
July 22, 2013
110 (32) 13126-13131

Abstract

Human CMV (hCMV) establishes lifelong infections in most of us, causing developmental defects in human embryos and life-threatening disease in immunocompromised individuals. During productive infection, the viral >230,000-bp dsDNA genome is expressed widely and in a temporal cascade. The hCMV genome does not carry histones when encapsidated but has been proposed to form nucleosomes after release into the host cell nucleus. Here, we present hCMV genome-wide nucleosome occupancy and nascent transcript maps during infection of permissive human primary cells. We show that nucleosomes occupy nuclear viral DNA in a nonrandom and highly predictable fashion. At early times of infection, nucleosomes associate with the hCMV genome largely according to their intrinsic DNA sequence preferences, indicating that initial nucleosome formation is genetically encoded in the virus. However, as infection proceeds to the late phase, nucleosomes redistribute extensively to establish patterns mostly determined by nongenetic factors. We propose that these factors include key regulators of viral gene expression encoded at the hCMV major immediate-early (IE) locus. Indeed, mutant virus genomes deficient for IE1 expression exhibit globally increased nucleosome loads and reduced nucleosome dynamics compared with WT genomes. The temporal nucleosome occupancy differences between IE1-deficient and WT viruses correlate inversely with changes in the pattern of viral nascent and total transcript accumulation. These results provide a framework of spatial and temporal nucleosome organization across the genome of a major human pathogen and suggest that an hCMV major IE protein governs overall viral chromatin structure and function.

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Data Availability

Data deposition: The data reported in this paper are available at http://genie.weizmann.ac.il/pubs/hcmv2013.

Acknowledgments

We thank C. Sinzger for TB40-BAC4, K. Tischer and K. Osterrieder for pLAY2 and GS1783, and H. Zhu for T-BACwt as well as K. Bernhardt and M. Zenger for experimental help. This work was supported by Human Frontier Science Program Grant RGY0071/2008 (to F.G., E.S., and M.N.) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant NE791/2-2 (to M.N.).

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Information & Authors

Information

Published in

The cover image for PNAS Vol.110; No.32
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Vol. 110 | No. 32
August 6, 2013
PubMed: 23878222

Classifications

Data Availability

Data deposition: The data reported in this paper are available at http://genie.weizmann.ac.il/pubs/hcmv2013.

Submission history

Published online: July 22, 2013
Published in issue: August 6, 2013

Keywords

  1. herpesvirus
  2. functional genomics
  3. epigenetic regulation
  4. ChIP-chip

Acknowledgments

We thank C. Sinzger for TB40-BAC4, K. Tischer and K. Osterrieder for pLAY2 and GS1783, and H. Zhu for T-BACwt as well as K. Bernhardt and M. Zenger for experimental help. This work was supported by Human Frontier Science Program Grant RGY0071/2008 (to F.G., E.S., and M.N.) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant NE791/2-2 (to M.N.).

Notes

*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.

Authors

Affiliations

Einat Zalckvar
Departments of aComputer Science and Applied Mathematics and
Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel;
Christina Paulus
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany; and
Desiree Tillo
Departments of aComputer Science and Applied Mathematics and
Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel;
Alexandra Asbach-Nitzsche
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany; and
Yaniv Lubling
Departments of aComputer Science and Applied Mathematics and
Carla Winterling
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany; and
Present address: Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
Nicholas Strieder
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany; and
Present address: Institute for Biochemistry I, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Katrin Mücke
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany; and
Felicia Goodrum
Department of Immunobiology, BIO5 Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 65721
Departments of aComputer Science and Applied Mathematics and
Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel;
Michael Nevels3 [email protected]
Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany; and

Notes

3
To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected].
Author contributions: F.G., E.S., and M.N. designed research; C.P., A.A.-N., C.W., N.S., and K.M. performed experiments; E.Z., D.T., Y.L., F.G., E.S., and M.N. analyzed data; E.Z., D.T., F.G., E.S., and M.N. interpreted data; and E.Z., C.P., D.T., F.G., E.S., and M.N. wrote the paper.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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    Nucleosome maps of the human cytomegalovirus genome reveal a temporal switch in chromatin organization linked to a major IE protein
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    • Vol. 110
    • No. 32
    • pp. 12853-13228

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