Matthew Reeves: The delicate balance between latency and reactivation in herpes virus infection (2)

Abstract: A defining biological characteristic of herpes virus infection is the ability to establish lifelong latent infections of the host. These are usually responsible for limited disease but, in certain circumstances, can lead to life-threatening morbidity when the immune system is impaired. In these 3 lectures I will introduce the 9 herpes viruses known to infect humans and discuss the pathogenesis of these viruses using key examples. We will then focus on the key molecular and cellular determinants of viral latency and how the host environment is crucial for shaping the outcome of infection and, by extension, how the virus has evolved to further manipulate the host cell to enhance this. Specifically, we will consider how cell identity is a crucial determinant of viral latency and how cell-type specific functions contribute to latency including epigenetic modifications and miRNA function and the implications for these functions on latency within the host organism. Finally, I will focus on human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) to discuss the key mechanisms considered important for viral reactivation and demonstrate that viral genes expressed during latent infection are important for maintaining latency AND for priming the host cell environment to be optimal for reactivation.