An Integrated Sequencing Approach for Updating of Pseudorabies Virus Transcriptome

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints202012.0616.v1
• Publication Date: 2020-12-28T03:04:50Z
• Authors: Gábor Torma; Dóra Tombácz; Zsolt Csabai; Dániel Göbhardter; Zoltán Deim; Michael Snyder; Zsolt Boldogkői
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; pacific biosciences; R; pseudorabies virus; Article; virology; 3. Good health; 03 medical and health sciences; herpesvirus; nanopore sequencing; long-read sequencing; Pacific Biosciences; Medicine; transcriptome

In the last couple of years, the implementation of long-read sequencing (LRS) technologies for transcriptome profiling has uncovered an extreme complexity of viral gene expression. In this study, we carried out a systematic analysis on the pseudorabies virus transcriptome by combining our current data obtained by using Pacific Biosciences Sequel and Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION sequencings with our earlier data generated by other LRS and short-read sequencing techniques. As a result, we identified a number of novel genes, transcripts, and transcript isoforms, including splice and length variants, and also confirmed earlier annotated RNA molecules. One of the major findings of this study is the discovery of a large number of 5’-truncated putative mRNAs embedded into larger host mRNAs. A large fraction of these RNA molecules contain in-frame ORFs, which may encode N-terminally truncated polypeptides. These study demonstrates that the PRV transcriptome is much more complex than previously appreciated.