Host gene expression modulated by Zika virus infection of human-293 cells

The HEK-293 cell line was created in 1977 by transformation of primary human embryonic kidney cells with sheared adenovirus type 5 DNA. A previous study determined that the HEK-293 cells have neuronal markers rather than kidney markers. In this study, we tested the hypothesis whether Zika virus (ZIKV), a neurotropic virus, is able to infect and replicate in the HEK-293 cells. We show that the HEK-293 cells infected with ZIKV support viral replication as shown by indirect immunofluorescence (IFA) and quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR (qRT-PCR). We performed RNA-seq analysis on the ZIKV-infected and the control uninfected HEK-293 cells and find 659 genes that are differentially transcribed in ZIKV-infected HEK-293 cells as compared to uninfected cells. The results show that the top 10 differentially transcribed and upregulated genes are involved in antiviral and inflammatory responses. Seven upregulated genes, IFNL1, DDX58, CXCL10, ISG15, KCNJ15, IFNIH1, and IFIT2, were validated by qRT-PCR. Altogether, our findings show that ZIKV infection alters host gene expression by affecting their antiviral and inflammatory responses.