Influenza virus facilitates its infectivity by activating p53 to inhibit the expression of interferon-induced transmembrane proteins (IFITMs)

Transcriptome analysis of mock or H1N1 IAV PR8 infected p53WT A549 and p53null A549-KO3 cells by Affymetrix GeneChip Human Transcriptome 2.0 Arrays to achieve a set of genes those are regulated by p53 and responsive to IAV infection. Influenza A virus infection activates cellular p53, however it has not been clear whether this process has pro- or anti- viral effects. In this study, using human isogenic p53 wildtype A549 cells and p53null A549-KO3 cells generated from the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, we report that p53null cells exhibit significantly reduced viral propagation property when infected with influenza A virus (H1N1/A/Puerto Rico/8/34). Here, using genome-wide microarray analysis we revealed that p53 regulates the expression of a large set of interferon-inducible genes, some of which are directly associated with viral infectivity and later experimentally validated to be responsible for p53-regulated IAV infectivity. We analyzed the gene expression profiling of H1N1 infected p53WT A549 and p53null A549-KO3 cells generated by CRISPR/Cas9 technology using Affymetrix Human Transciptome 2.0 Array with three technical replicates in each condition.