Open Access

ARTICLE

Human cytomegalovirus autophagy is related to the interferon synthesis and mTOR signal pathway

DONGMEI GAO^1,#, JIAOE CHEN^2,#, HONGZHANG LI^2,*, JUN ZHAO^3,*

1 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Third Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, China
2 Department of Gastroenterology, Sanmen People’s Hospital, Taizhou, 317100, China
3 Department of Microbiology, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, 230032, China

* Corresponding Authors: HONGZHANG LI. Email: ; JUN ZHAO. Email:
# Dongmei Gao and Jiaoe Chen contributed equally to this work and should be considered as co-first authors

BIOCELL 2022, 46(10), 2275-2280. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2022.021008

Received 23 December 2021; Accepted 18 February 2022; Issue published 13 June 2022

Abstract

Introduction: Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is reported to be involved in the occurrence of many human diseases. To further investigate the biological changes of HCMV, we analyzed the relevant factors that affect the autophagy caused by HCMV infection. Methods: Firstly, we cultured human embryonic lung fibroblasts (HELF) cells with HCMV infection, and evaluated the effects of HELF cells infected with different viruses through Enzyme-linked immunoabsorbent assay (ELISA), Real-time quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR), Acridine orange (AO) staining and Western blotting (WB) experiments. Results: Through the above experiments, we found that the combined treatment of HCMV infection and carbamazepine, rapamycin and si-mTOR promoted the increase of interferon (IFN)-α/β expression and protein level, and caused the increase of LC3B protein level in HELF cells. In addition, HCMV infection could also affect the biological activities of HELF cells by regulating signal pathways like the JAK/STAT. Conclusion: Autophagy induced by HCMV is affected by the changes in the biological behavior of HELF cells, especially IFN-α/β synthesis and mTOR signal pathway. These findings might shed new light on HCMV-related disease treatment.

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Keywords

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