Researchers here provide evidence that SPOC1 overexpression severely impairs HCMV replication by repressing the initiation of viral immediate early (IE) gene expression. SPOC1-depleted primary human fibroblasts displayed augmented initiation of viral IE gene expression. This occurs in a MOI-dependent manner, a defining hallmark of intrinsic immunity. Interestingly, repression requires the presence of high SPOC1 levels at the start of infection while a later upregulation had no negative impact suggesting distinct temporal roles of SPOC1 during the HCMV replicative cycle. The data add SPOC1 as a novel factor to the endowment of a host cell to restrict cytomegalovirus infections. The Bioruptor was used to shear chromatin in this study for further analysis of the chromatin via ChIP. Read more.
