Serum starvation impacts rhinovirus spread from cell to cell

Area of Science:

• Virology
• Cell Biology
• Infectious Diseases

Background:

• Single-cell studies reveal heterogeneity in virus-host gene expression and progeny release during infection.
• Limited understanding exists on how newly produced viruses spread to infect adjacent cells.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the kinetics and influencing factors of viral infection spread at the single-cell level.
• To analyze how host cell conditions affect the efficiency and timing of secondary viral infections.

Main Methods:

• Monitoring reporter-gene expression from recombinant rhinovirus in infected cell monolayers at low multiplicity of infection.
• Assessing infection spread dynamics under conditions of serum starvation, protein synthesis inhibition, cell cycle arrest, and varying receptor expression.

Main Results:

• The second round of rhinovirus infection showed a significantly shorter delay in reporter-gene expression compared to the first round, indicating accelerated infection spread.
• External factors such as serum starvation, protein synthesis inhibition, cell cycle arrest, and receptor expression levels modulated the efficiency and timing of infection spread.

Conclusions:

• The study demonstrates an acceleration in viral infection spread across cell monolayers.
• The developed method is sensitive to host cell factors, highlighting their crucial role in modulating viral dissemination.
• This approach offers potential for studying host-pathogen interactions in viral spread dynamics.