GSE135363
Comprehensive Annotations of Human Herpesvirus 6A and 6B Genomes Reveals Novel and Conserved Genomic Features
Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) A and B are highly ubiquitous betaherpesviruses, infecting the majority of the human population. Like other herpesviruses, our understanding of their protein coding potential is far from complete. Here we use ribosome profiling and RNA-seq to experimentally define the HHV-6 translation products and to follow their temporal expression. We identified hundreds of new open reading frames (ORF)s, including many upstream ORFs (uORF)s and internal ORFs (iORF)s, generating a complete atlas of HHV-6 translation products.  Integrating data from human cytomegalovirus we uncover numerous uORFs and iORFs that are conserved between beta herpesviruses and we show uORFs are specifically enriched in late viral genes. We also identified three highly abundant viral long non coding RNAs (lncRNA)s and we show one of these lncRNAs generate a non-polyadenylated stable intron that is conserved between all sequenced beta herpesviruses. Overall, this work uncovers the full complexity of the HHV-6 family genomes and highlights novel features that are conserved between beta herpesviruses, providing a resource for future functional studies. Overall design: Ribosme profiling and RNA-seq along HHV-6A and HHV-6B infection