RNA-seq profiling of gene expression in mock-infected and human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)–infected human embryonic lung fibroblasts (HELF) at 72 hours post infection (two biological replicates per condition)

RNA-seq was performed to quantify host gene-expression changes in human embryonic lung fibroblast (HELF) cells following infection with the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) HAN strain. HELF cells harvested at 72 hours post infection and mock-infected controls were profiled, with two biological replicates per condition (HELF_1/2 for mock; HCMV_HELF_1/2 for infected). Libraries were sequenced on an Illumina platform with paired-end 150-bp reads, and reads were aligned to the human reference genome (GRCh38) for gene-level quantification. The submission includes a cross-sample expression matrix (raw counts and FPKM) and a differential-expression results table comparing infected versus mock conditions, enabling reuse of the dataset for downstream analyses. Raw FASTQ files are deposited in SRA under the corresponding BioProject and BioSample accessions. This study uses a two-group design to measure infection-dependent transcriptional responses in HELF cells. Four bulk RNA-seq samples were generated: mock-infected HELF cells (biological replicates n=2, HELF_1 and HELF_2) and HCMV-infected HELF cells collected at 72 h post infection (n=2, HCMV_HELF_1 and HCMV_HELF_2). Infection status is the primary variable, with mock-infected cells serving as the reference control. All samples were sequenced on an Illumina instrument with paired-end 150-bp reads, and gene-level expression was quantified against GRCh38, allowing direct comparison between conditions and replicate-aware differential-expression analysis. Raw data uploaded to SRA under PRJNA1310581 and PRJNA1310170