Metabolic modulation by the HCMV UL38 gene

人巨细胞病毒（HCMV）是先天性出生缺陷的主要原因，并在婴儿中引起严重疾病。 广泛的免疫抑制患者人群，包括血液癌症患者和移植 受惠人士我们已经发现，HCMV建立了一个前病毒代谢程序，驱动许多细胞凋亡， 支持病毒后代产生的代谢活动。最近，我们发现HCMV UL 38 蛋白质是必要的，足以驱动HCMV诱导的代谢重塑的许多方面，我们 假设UL 38通过其抑制TSC 2肿瘤抑制蛋白来支持感染， 代谢调节我们将在目的1中通过阐明UL 38-TSC 2介导的代谢调节是如何被激活的来检验这一假设。 重塑有助于HCMV感染。此外，我们发现HCMV诱导神经元表达， 烯醇化酶2（ENO 2），我们发现其对于强HCMV感染是重要的。我们假设ENO 2诱导 对于HCMV介导的代谢调节至关重要，我们将在目标2中进行测试。最后，我们发现HCMV 感染和UL 38表达使细胞对代谢紊乱敏感，揭示了可能 有可能成为治疗靶点。我们假设HCMV感染和UL 38表达诱导了一种新的免疫应答。 代谢刚性状态，使细胞对代谢挑战敏感，我们将在目标3中测试这一假设。的 拟议的工作将扩大我们对一个重要的宿主病原体相互作用的理解，并考虑到这些 过程是必不可少的生产性感染，拟议的实验将突出新的目标， 治疗干预

Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a major cause of congenital birth defects and causes severe disease in a wide variety of immunosuppressed patient populations, including hematological cancer patients and transplant recipients. We have found that HCMV institutes a pro-viral metabolic program that drives numerous cellular metabolic activities to support the production of viral progeny. More recently, we find that the HCMV UL38 protein is necessary and sufficient to drive many aspects of HCMV-induced metabolic remodeling, and we hypothesize that UL38 supports infection through its inhibition of the TSC2 tumor suppressor protein to induce metabolic modulation. We will test this hypothesis in Aim 1 by elucidating how UL38-TSC2-mediated metabolic remodeling contributes to HCMV infection. In addition, we find that HCMV-induces the expression of neuronal enolase 2 (ENO2), which we find is important for robust HCMV infection. We hypothesize that ENO2 induction is critical for HCMV-mediated metabolic modulation, which we will test in Aim 2. Lastly, we find that both HCMV infection and UL38 expression sensitizes cells to metabolic perturbations, revealing vulnerabilities that could potentially be targeted therapeutically. We hypothesize that HCMV infection and UL38 expression induces a metabolically rigid state that sensitizes cells to metabolic challenges, a hypothesis we will test in Aim 3. The proposed work will broaden our understanding of an important host pathogen interaction, and given that these processes are essential for productive infection, the proposed experiments will highlight novel targets for therapeutic intervention.