1
Return

Metabolomic Analysis of Lytic KSHV Infection: Induced Host Nucleotide Metabolism Is Required for Infectious Virus Production

delete2026-08-11
delete0
delete
OA
AI
F
Fatima Hisam
E
Emma A. Winn
S
Spandan Mukherjee
S
Savannah E. Price
Y
Yennifer A. Gaspar
C
Claire Wang
H
Hamid Baniasadi
T
Tracie Delgado
E
Erica L. Sanchez *
DOI:10.3390/v18080877delete
deleteOriginal
deleteOriginal request for help
deleteShare
deleteSave
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Kaposi’s Sarcoma Herpesvirus (KSHV) is the etiological agent of Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), which induces metabolic stress in infected host cells. KSHV reprograms host metabolic pathways for efficient viral replication and infectious virion production. Here, we report a time-course global metabolomics study conducted in iSLK.BAC16 cells to compare latent and lytic KSHV infection. Our data show that amino acid, central carbon, and nucleotide metabolic pathways are highly dysregulated upon reactivation. During lytic KSHV infection, pathway enrichment analysis identifies purine and pyrimidine metabolism as the top two most significantly impacted and dysregulated pathways. Further experiments have shown that nucleotide metabolism is required during lytic KSHV infection to produce maximal infectious virus. Treatment with the FDA-approved drug, methotrexate (MTX), a folate antagonist that decreases nucleotide metabolism by reducing tetrahydrofolate cofactors, significantly reduced KSHV copy number and late lytic viral gene expression upon reactivation compared to controls. Additionally, titers of cell-free supernatants from MTX-treated lytic samples showed a significant reduction in infectious virion production. Furthermore, MTX significantly decreased the viral titer of murine herpesvirus 68 (MHV-68), a model virus to study gammaherpesvirus. Overall, our study demonstrates that metabolic inhibition during lytic gammaherpesvirus infection decreases productive infection and hence serves as a potential therapeutic antiviral target.
Keywords:
Kaposi’s Sarcoma Herpesvirus (KSHV)
Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS)
metabolomics
methotrexate (MTX)
nucleotide metabolism
lytic replication

Journal

V
Viruses-Basel
IF:
3.5
Papers:
112
Citations:
0

Organization

Seattle Pacific University cover
Seattle Pacific University
Scholars:
305
Papers: 207
Citations: 189
T
The University of Texas at Dallas
Scholars:
546
Papers: 205
Citations: 9.8K
U
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Scholars:
795
Papers: 348
Citations: 0
Cited Papers

Cited Papers

Citing Papers

Citing Papers