Strand-specific Dual RNA-seq of Bronchial Epithelial cells Infected with Influenza A/H3N2 Viruses Reveals Splicing of Gene Segment 6 and Novel Host-Virus Interactions

Host-influenza virus interplay at the transcript level has been extensively characterized in epithelial cells. Yet, there are no studies that simultaneously characterize human host and influenza A virus (IAV) genomes. We infected human bronchial epithelial BEAS-2B cells with two seasonal IAV/H3N2 strains, Brisbane/10/07 and Perth/16/09 (reference strains for past vaccine seasons) and the well-characterized laboratory strain Udorn/307/72. Strand-specific RNA-seq of the infected BEAS-2B cells allowed for simultaneous analysis of host and viral transcriptomes, in addition to pathogen genomes, to reveal changes in mRNA expression and alternative splicing (AS). In general, patterns of global and immune gene expression induced by the three IAVs were mostly shared. However, AS of host transcripts and small nuclear RNAs differed between the seasonal and laboratory strains. Analysis of viral transcriptomes showed deletions of the polymerase components (defective interfering (DI)-like RNAs) within the genome. Surprisingly, we found that the neuraminidase gene undergoes AS, and that the splicing event differs between seasonal and laboratory strains. Our findings reveal novel elements of the host-virus interaction and highlight the importance of RNA-seq in identifying molecular changes at the genome level that may contribute to shaping RNA-based innate immunity. Overall design: Examination of RNA from three different H3N2 viruses (and mock infection) at three timepoints with 3 biological replicates each.

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Fabozzi G, Oler AJ, Liu P, Chen Y, Mindaye S, Dolan MA, Kenney H, Gucek M, Zhu J, Rabin RL, Subbarao K