{"doi":"10.1371/journal.ppat.1009441","title":"Viral infection of human neurons triggers strain-specific differences in host neuronal and viral transcriptomes","abstract":"Infection with herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) occurs in over half the global population, causing recurrent orofacial and/or genital lesions. Individual strains of HSV-1 demonstrate differences in neurovirulence in vivo, suggesting that viral genetic differences may impact phenotype. Here differentiated SH-SY5Y human neuronal cells were infected with one of three HSV-1 strains known to differ in neurovirulence in vivo. Host and viral RNA were sequenced simultaneously, revealing strain-specific differences in both viral and host transcription in infected neurons. Neuronal morphology and immunofluorescence data highlight the pathological changes in neuronal cytoarchitecture induced by HSV-1 infection, which may reflect host transcriptional changes in pathways associated with adherens junctions, integrin signaling, and others. Comparison of viral protein levels in neurons and epithelial cells demonstrated that a number of differences were neuron-specific, suggesting that strain-to-strain variations in host and virus transcription are cell type-dependent. Together, these data demonstrate the importance of studying virus strain- and cell-type-specific factors that may contribute to neurovirulence in vivo, and highlight the specificity of HSV-1-host interactions.","journal":"PLoS Pathogens","year":2021,"id":173278,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":24,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9583,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":667046,"name":"Molly M. Rathbun","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":710478,"name":"Daniel W. Renner","orcid":"0000-0001-9878-8294","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":710479,"name":"Chad V. Kuny","orcid":"0000-0002-6199-6273","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":251791,"name":"Moriah L. Szpara","orcid":"0000-0001-9859-1678","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":710477,"name":"Colleen A. Mangold","orcid":"0000-0001-7205-4540","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":122,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:45.768135Z","pmid":"33750985","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}