Manipulation of the cell cycle by human cytomegalovirus

The human cytomegalovirus-induced changes to the transcriptome and proteome of infected cells in many ways resemble an abortive mitogenic response. The virus induces quiescent cells to re-enter the cell cycle, but they are prevented from entering the S phase, where the synthesis of the cellular genome would compete with that of the virus for the available precursors for DNA replication. The mechanisms of these cell cycle alterations include transcriptional induction and repression, post-translational modifications and changes in protein stability. Essentially every class of cell cycle regulators is affected, and some of the key proteins are targeted by multiple different mechanisms. While the effects on cell cycle progression of viral infection, and of individual viral genes outside the context of viral infection have been described, it is now important to synthesize these two experimental approaches to gain a more complete understanding of how and why human cytomegalovirus infection affects cell cycle progression.