Polyamine depletion and Coxsackievirus infection of hepatocytes

Metabolism is key to cellular processes that ultimately underly the ability of a virus to productively infect a cell. Polyamines are small metabolites that are vital for many host cell processes including cellular proliferation, transcription, and translation, and these molecules are also key in virus infection. Depletion of polyamines inhibits viral infection via diverse mechanisms, including by inhibiting polymerase activity, cellular attachment, and translation of viral proteins. The precise mechanisms underlying many of these phenotypes remain to be understood. We have shown previously that Coxsackievirus B3 requires polyamines for attachment and protease function; however, the mechanism behind this is unknown. Here, we compared the transcriptional profiles of cells treated with polyamine-depleting drug DFMO and CVB3 infection.