Overall, our study demonstrates that RNA2.7 reshapes RNA biology in the infected cell, sequestering RBPs and modifying RNA stability. Functionally it contributes to the fascinating and complex cell cycle arrest phenotype mediated by HCMV and is important for the infection of rapidly cycling cells.
RNA2.7 alone is sufficient for inducing a cell cycle arrest, even outside of the context of infection.
A tiled screen discovered an adenine-rich region which is required for this function.
Knockout of RNA2.7-bound RBPs induces a cell cycle arrest and partially rescues the ΔRNA2.7 infection. This suggests that RBP sequestration plays a part in RNA2.7’s functionality.
Functionally, RNA2.7 is required for arresting the cell cycle of G1-infected cells and for promoting their infection.
Interestingly, cells infected at G0 are unaffected by RNA2.7, highlighting its specific role in the infection of actively cycling cells.
RNA2.7 pulldown identified binding to RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). eCLIP data further show that these RBPs are enriched on transcripts upregulated in an RNA2.7-dependent manner.
RNA2.7 expression reshapes the host transcriptome, and these effects strongly correlate with changes in RNA stability, indicating that altered stability drives cellular RNA abundance.
RNA2.7 accumulates in the cytosol and is the most abundant polyadenylated transcript in infected cells.
To dissect its function, we utilized a deletion mutant virus (ΔRNA2.7) and examined its impact on host mRNAs.
We are excited to share our new paper in Molecular Cell uncovering how the viral lncRNA RNA2.7 reshapes host cell biology!
sciencedirect.com/science/authShare/S1097276526001565/20260324T143400Z/1?md5=16c84051c2f253c4665427f837a529d3&dgcid=author
A thread 🧵
Tomorrow at the #SystemsVirologyJournalClub, @finkelyaara.bsky.social will present her work with @sginossarlab.bsky.social on engineering HCMV to express sgRNA libraries directly from the viral genome to profile virus-host interactions across the infection cycle. Join us!
Our new paper is out in Nature 🎉. We show that m1Ψ in mRNA vaccines doesn’t just quiet immunity, it also directly enhance translation by reshaping ribosome dynamics in a sequence-dependent way 🧬
Full paper : rdcu.be/eY5gx
Drosophila follicle showing retrotransposons (pink & yellow) expressed in somatic cells infecting the oocyte
1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇
Our paper out @CellCellPress: Structure guided discovery of viral proteins that inhibit host immunity
Congrats Erez Yirmiya, Azita Leavitt, Gil Amitai, our collaborators at the Kranzusch lab, and coauthors
A 🧵 1/10
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...
Join our RNA Mediated Regulation of Immunity conference! Register until January 28th and access two conferences for the price of one, including Non-Coding RNA Biology. keysym.us/KSRNAImmune25 #KSRNAImmune25 #RNA #regulatoryRNA #immunology #immunity @sginossarlab.bsky.social
We're excited to announce the 2025 Nucleic Acid Tx meeting - on 5/2/25 at the Weizmann.
Great speakers from academia/industry. Co-org with
@sginossarlab.bsky.social @schraga.bsky.social Yaniv Erlich and Yogev Debbi.
Abstract submission/free reg. link: bit.ly/3ODdRer