Next Generation Sequencing to determine HHV-6B Transcriptome in HCT patients with a recent viral reactivation

Purpose: The goal of this study is to determine the expression profile of HHV-6B in whole blood samples from transplant patients with HHV-6B genomes detected in plasma Methods: Viral mRNA profiles in whole blood samples of different transplant patients were generated by deep sequencing using Illumina Hiseq. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were analyzed at the transcript isoform level with two methods: Burrows–Wheeler Aligner (BWA) followed by ANOVA (ANOVA) and TopHat followed by Cufflinks. qRT–PCR validation for U38 expression was performed using TaqMan Results: Hierarchical clustering uncovered systematic detection of U38 mRNA transcripts in whole blood samples from all patients with a detectable HHV-6B reactivation in their plasma Conclusions: Our study represents the first detailed analysis of viral transcriptomes associated with HHV-6B reactivation in whole blood samples generated by RNA-seq technology. Our results show that NGS offers a comprehensive and more accurate qualitative evaluation of mRNA content within a whole blood sample. Examine HHV-6B viral transcriptome in whole blood samples from hematopoietic transplant patients with detectable plasma viral loads determined by qPCR