Roles of avian herpesvirus microRNAs in infection, latency, and oncogenesis

MicroRNAs have been reported for the avian herpesviruses Marek's disease virus 1 (MDV1; oncogenic), Marek's disease virus 2 (MDV2; non-oncogenic), herpesvirus of turkeys (HVT), and infectious laryngotracheitis virus (ILTV). No obvious phylogenetic relationships exist among the avian herpesvirus microRNAs, but the general genomic locations of microRNA clusters are conserved, with microRNAs being located in the repeat regions of the genomes. In some cases, microRNAs are antisense to open reading frames. Among MDV1 field isolates with different virulence properties, microRNAs are highly conserved, and variations that have been observed lie in putative promoter regions. One cluster of MDV1 microRNAs lies upstream of the meq gene, and this cluster is more highly expressed in tumors caused by an extremely virulent MDV1 isolate compared to tumors caused by a less virulent isolate. Several of the avian herpesvirus microRNAs are orthologs of microRNAs in other species. For example, mdv1-miR-M4 shares a seed sequence with gga-miR-155 (also shared with Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) kshv-miR-K12), mdv2-miR-M21 shares a seed with miR-29b, and hvt-miR-H14 shares a seed sequence with miR-221. Functional analyses of avian herpesvirus microRNAs include a variety of in vitro assays to demonstrate potential function as well as the use of mutants that can exploit the ability to assess phenotypes experimentally in the natural host. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled:MicroRNA's in viral gene regulation.