Undergraduate Research & Publications

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Lytic Reactivation of Porcine Lymphotropic Herpesvirus 3
(University of Calgary, 2018-09-24) Luu, Gia; Hundt, Jana; Rowell, Jared; Czub, Markus
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has infected more 90% of the world’s population, and is the cause of 2% of all neoplasms globally. In pigs, a closely related gammaherpes virus was identified called Porcine Lymphotrophic Herpesvirus 3 (PLHV3), that also causes lymphoproliferative disorders that resemble those caused by EBV. The purpose of this research is to generate a high titer viral stock of PLHV3 by shifting the viral life cycle from latency to lytic replication using baculovirus expression systems (BEVS) in latently infected cell lines. Infected lymphoblastic cell lines (LCL) will be infected with baculovirus vector carrying two PLHV3 immediate early genes that are crucial for lytic reactivation, BZLF1 and BRLF1. These immediate early genes will become expressed after the infection to produce recombinant proteins in high quantity, thus allowing viral reactivation. BZLF1, BRLF1 and an appropriate mammalian promoter will be cloned into the vector using PCR cloning. Acquiring a high titer viral stock will allow the generation of a chimeric PLHV3-EBV virus that could be used to establish a porcine model for studying EBV.