Abstract
Viruses, like their metazoan hosts, have evolved to utilize intricate transcriptional mechanisms to generate a vast array of both coding and noncoding RNA transcripts. The resolution of specific noncoding RNA transcripts produced by viruses, particularly herpesviruses, presents a particularly difficult challenge due to their highly dense dsDNA genomes and their complex, overlapping, and context-dependent network of transcripts. While new long read sequencing platforms have facilitated the resolution of some noncoding transcripts from virus genomes, empirical molecular validation of transcripts from individual regions is essential. Herein, we demonstrate that the use of strand specific northern blots is essential for true validation of specific viral noncoding RNAs, and provide here a detailed molecular method for such an approach.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Consortium TEP (2012) An integrated encyclopedia of DNA elements in the human genome. Nature 489:57–74
Derrien T, Johnson R, Bussotti G et al (2012) The GENCODE v7 catalog of human long noncoding RNAs: analysis of their gene structure, evolution, and expression. Genome Res 22:1775–1789
Hangauer MJ, Vaughn IW, McManus MT (2013) Pervasive transcription of the human genome produces thousands of previously unidentified long intergenic noncoding RNAs. PLoS Genet 9:e1003569
Djebali S, Davis CA, Merkel A et al (2012) Landscape of transcription in human cells. Nature 489:101–108
Arvin A, Campadelli-Fiume G, Mocarski E, Moore PS, Roizman B, Whitley R, Yamanishi K (2007) Human herpesviruses: biology, therapy, and Immunoprophylaxis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Tombácz D, Csabai Z, Szűcs A, Balázs Z, Moldován N, Sharon D, Snyder M, Boldogkői Z (2017) Long-read isoform sequencing reveals a hidden complexity of the transcriptional landscape of herpes simplex virus type 1. Front Microbiol 8:1079
Chandriani S, Xu Y, Ganem D (2010) The lytic transcriptome of Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus reveals extensive transcription of noncoding regions, including regions antisense to important genes. J Virol 84:7934–7942
Arias C, Weisburd B, Stern-Ginossar N, Mercier A, Madrid AS, Bellare P, Holdorf M, Weissman JS, Ganem D (2014) KSHV 2.0: a comprehensive annotation of the Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus genome using next-generation sequencing reveals novel genomic and functional features. PLoS Pathog 10:e1003847
Kara M, O’Grady T, Feldman ER, Feswick A, Wang Y, Flemington EK, Tibbetts SA (2019) Gammaherpesvirus Readthrough transcription generates a long non-coding RNA that is regulated by antisense miRNAs and correlates with enhanced lytic replication in vivo. Noncoding RNA 5:6
Tycowski KT, Guo YE, Lee N, Moss WN, Vallery TK, Xie M, Steitz JA (2015) Viral noncoding RNAs: more surprises. Genes Dev 29:567–584
O’Grady T, Wang X, Höner Zu Bentrup K, Baddoo M, Concha M, Flemington EK (2016) Global transcript structure resolution of high gene density genomes through multi-platform data integration. Nucleic Acids Res 44(18):e145. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkw629
O’Grady T, Feswick A, Hoffman BA, Wang Y, Medina EM, Kara M, van Dyk LF, Flemington EK, Tibbetts SA (2019) Genome-wide transcript structure resolution reveals abundant alternate isoform usage from murine Gammaherpesvirus 68. Cell Rep 27:3988–4002.e5
Quinn JJ, Chang HY (2016) Unique features of long non-coding RNA biogenesis and function. Nat Rev Genet 17:47–62
Liu W, Ding C (2017) Roles of LncRNAs in viral infections. Front Cell Infect Microbiol 7:205
Wang Z, Zhao Y, Zhang Y (2017) Viral lncRNA: a regulatory molecule for controlling virus life cycle. Noncoding RNA Res 2:38–44
Elfman J, Li H (2020) Detection and measurement of chimeric RNAs by RT-PCR. In: Li H, Elfman J (eds) Chimeric RNA methods Protoc. Springer US, New York, NY, pp 83–94
Shi X, Qin F, Li H (2020) Confirmation of transcriptional read-through events by RT-PCR. Methods Mol Biol 2079:177–186
Su W-C, Lai MMC (2018) Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of influenza virus endocytic escape. Methods Mol Biol 1836:185–194
Acknowledgments
S.A.T. was supported by NIH R01AI108407 and NIH P01CA214091. We thank Dr. Erik Flemington and Dr. Rolf Renne and members of the Renne and Flemington labs for helpful discussions and suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Kara, M., Tibbetts, S.A. (2021). Empirical Validation of Overlapping Virus lncRNAs and Coding Transcripts by Northern Blot. In: Navarro, A. (eds) Long Non-Coding RNAs in Cancer. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2348. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1581-2_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1581-2_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-1580-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-1581-2
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols