Carlson Rebecca J, Patten J J, Stefanakis George, Soong Brian Y, Radhakrishnan Adityanarayanan, Singh Avtar, Thakur Naveen, Sheehan Kathleen C F, Amarasinghe Gaya K, Hacohen Nir, Basler Christopher F, Leung Daisy W, Uhler Caroline, Davey Robert A, Blainey Paul C
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Nat Microbiol. 2025 Jul 24. doi: 10.1038/s41564-025-02034-3.
Filoviruses such as Ebola virus (EBOV) give rise to frequent epidemics with high case fatality rates while therapeutic options remain limited. Earlier genetic screens aimed to identify potential drug targets for EBOV relied on systems that may not fully recapitulate the virus life cycle. Here we applied an image-based genome-wide CRISPR screen to identify 998 host regulators of EBOV infection in 39,085,093 cells. A deep learning model associated each host factor with a distinct viral replication step. From this we confirmed UQCRB as a post-entry regulator of EBOV RNA replication and show that small-molecule UQCRB inhibition reduced virus infection in vitro. Using a random forest model, we found that perturbations on STRAP (a spliceosome-associated factor) disrupted the equilibrium between viral RNA and protein. STRAP was associated with VP35, a viral RNA processing protein. This genome-wide screen coupled with 12 secondary screens including validation experiments with Sudan and Marburg virus, presents a rich resource for host regulators of virus replication and potential targets for therapeutic intervention.
埃博拉病毒(EBOV)等丝状病毒频繁引发疫情,病死率很高,而治疗选择仍然有限。早期旨在确定埃博拉病毒潜在药物靶点的基因筛选依赖于可能无法完全重现病毒生命周期的系统。在这里,我们应用了基于图像的全基因组CRISPR筛选,在39085093个细胞中鉴定出998个埃博拉病毒感染的宿主调节因子。一个深度学习模型将每个宿主因子与一个独特的病毒复制步骤联系起来。由此我们证实泛醌还原酶核心蛋白B(UQCRB)是埃博拉病毒RNA复制的进入后调节因子,并表明小分子抑制UQCRB可在体外减少病毒感染。使用随机森林模型,我们发现对STRAP(一种剪接体相关因子)的干扰破坏了病毒RNA与蛋白质之间的平衡。STRAP与病毒RNA加工蛋白VP35相关。这种全基因组筛选与12个二级筛选相结合,包括用苏丹病毒和马尔堡病毒进行的验证实验,为病毒复制的宿主调节因子和治疗干预的潜在靶点提供了丰富的资源。
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