RNA-sequencing of HCMV-infected ARPE-19 and MCF10A cells

In this study, viral and cellular gene expression profiles were acquired after infecting ARPE-19 and MCF10A cells with strain TB40/E-BAC4 of human cytomegalovirus. ARPE-19 cells are permissive for HCMV infection, while MCF10A cells are semi-permissive. This data was acquired to study the effects of epithelial and mesenchymal cell states on HCMV infection. Despite being derived from a primary retinal epithelial explant, ARPE-19 cells require long periods of high confluency to display epithelial characteristics. Under the conditions used in this experiment, ARPE-19 cells are phenotyically mesenchymal, as shown in Golconda et al, Viruses, 2024. MCF10A cells display strong epithelial characteristics under the conditions used here. Triplicate cultures of ARPE-19 and MCF10A cells were infected with a recombinant HCMV (strain TB40/E-BAC4) engineered with a GFP-A206K-P2A cassette inserted at the UL83 ATG-codon. Mock cultures were collected at 6 hpi and 96 hpi. Infected cultures were collected at 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 144 hpi. ARPE-19 and MCF10A cells were infected at a multiplicity of 3 or 5 infectious units/cell, respectively. RNA was purified from cultures at each time point and subjected to total RNA-sequencing analysis.