Accumulation of specific RNAs encoding transcriptional factors and stress response proteins against a background of severe depletion of cellular RNAsin cells infected with herpes simplex virus 1

Herpes simplex virus 1 encodes several functions to preclude the shutoff of host response to infection, including degradation of mRNA immediately afte r infection. To determine whether any cellular mRNAs accumulate in infected cells against a background of severe loss of host RNA, we hybridized cDNAs derived from three different cell lines infected with wild type and a muta nt virus to a DNA array containing probes for 588 human genes representing different functional groups. The results were that (i) infected cells accum ulated at levels above those of mock-infected cells, a small number of tran scripts representing transcriptional factors that could regulate gene expre ssion both positively and negatively, and one stress response protein (GADD 45), (ii) the amount and nature of the accumulated transcripts showed limit ed variability depending on the cell and virus, and (iii) at least some of the proteins encoded by the accumulated transcripts could benefit either th e virus or the host.