Date of Award

Fall 10-23-2012

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biology

First Advisor

Charlie Garnett Benson

Second Advisor

Casonya Johnson

Third Advisor

Jessica Parilla

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Adenovirus Death Protein (ADP) expression during late stages of a lytic infection releases mature virions to promote viral spread, thus leading to death of the host cell. We sought to investigate ADP expression patterns in persistently infected human lymphocytes cells. We hypothesized that low expression of ADP allows the virus to persist while high expression would promote lytic infection in lymphocytes. Accordingly, we found ADP expressed in low amount in BJAB and KE37 cells, while lytically infected Jurkat cells demonstrated higher ADP expression in both protein and transcript levels. ADP overexpression in persistently infected lymphocytes did not alter the viability of these cells, or their level of ADP expression. In contrast, Jurkat cells infected with an ADP-deleted virus had increased survival and maintained viral DNA for greater than 1-month, suggesting conversion to a persistent infection. Also manipulating ADP expression had minimal impact on the total virus yield from infected lymphocytes.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/3489019

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