Functional genomics of Pseudorabies in pigs: a model for host-pathogen interaction studies

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are micromanagers of gene expression. Due to their non immunogenic nature, viral miRNAs represent an efficient tool to control the cell environment. Most herpesviruses encode miRNAs to manipulate the post-transcriptional regulation of their own genomes and that of their host. PRV (alphaherpesvirus, aetiological agent of Aujeszky’s disease) establishes latent infections primarily in the trigeminal ganglia of its natural host, the pig. Deep sequencing has identified five miRNAs expressed from the Large Latency Transcript region and highly conserved among different PRV strains, thus candidate to be involved in the regulation of latency. Our goal is to unravel the biological role of these miRNAs using a combination of in silico, in vitro and in vivo approaches