Comprehensive annotations of HHV-6A/B reveal novel genomic features

Hundreds of new open reading frames were identified in a comprehensive study that generated a complete unbiased atlas of the HHV-6A/B proteome.

Noam Stern-Ginossar,PhD

Weizmann Institute of Science

An Israeli group led by Noam Stern-Ginossar from the Weizmann Institute of Science employed ribosome-profiling and transcript-analysis to identify new open reading frames (ORFs). They uncovered numerous upstream  ORFs and internal ORFs, conserved across beta herpesviruses, including three previously unrecognized and highly abundant HHV-6 encoded long non-coding RNAs.

The authors note that their work reveals  the complexity of the HHV-6A/B genomes and highlights novel features conserved between beta-herpesviruses. They expect this work will provide a rich resource for future functional studies.

Read the full paper: Finkel 2020