Whole Transcriptomic Expression Differences in EBV Immortalized versus Primary B-Cells

The Epstein–Barr Virus (EBV) is a human gamma herpes virus that infects more than 90% of the human population worldwide. It is commonly known in the US as the cause of Infectious Mononucleosis, and around the world as the cause of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and malignant lymphomas such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, endemic Burkett’s lymphoma and Hodgkin lymphoma. Additionally, the EBV is used to immortalize cells to create cell lines for in-vitro studies. To what extent the EBV changes the cell machinery through gene regulation is poorly understood to date. There has been no study that examined the whole transcriptome perturbations between primary lymphocytes (non-Immortalized) compared to the EBV immortalized lymphoblastoid cells. To address this oversight, this study re-examined the whole transcriptome from two independent studies on different Affymetrix platforms. Our analyses identified 4,366 probe-sets corresponding to 1,598 genes that are have significantly different expression patterns between immortalized and primary B-cells. We further show significant enrichment of these genes into 168 different pathways. Analysis of these expression profiles and pathway enrichment helps to give insight into the mechanisms used by the EBV to maintain immortalization of infected B cells.College of William and Mary, Roy C. Charles Center; Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics Progra