Oral Presentation 24th Australian Conference on Microscopy and Microanalysis 2016

Impact of respiratory syncytial virus infection on host cell mitochondrial morphology and function  (#61)

MengJie Hu 1 , Hong-Mei Li 2 , Leon Caly 2 , Darren C. Henstridge 3 , Keith Schulze 4 , Diana Stojanovski 1 , David Jans 2 , Marie Bogoyevitch 1
  1. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology , The University of Melbourne , Melbourne , VIC , Australia
  2. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology , Monash University , Melbourne , VIC , Australia
  3. Cellular and Molecular Metabolism Laboratory, Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, Melbourne , VIC, Australia
  4. Monash Micro Imaging Facility , Monash University , Melbourne , VIC, Australia

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a significant human pathogen, causing acute lower respiratory illness in millions of infants, and exacerbating asthma, bronchiolitis and pneumonia in the elderly and immunosuppressed adults. Although the clinical manifestations are known, the pathogenesis of RSV infection is not well understood. The involvement of host cell mitochondria, as part of anti-viral immune responses, remained unclear. With recent proteomics indicating RSV’s impact on many nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins, we are evaluating for the first time the association between RSV and mitochondria in A549 adenocarcinomic human alveolar basal epithelial cells. Our studies focused first on documenting RSV-induced changes in mitochondrial morphology and respiratory function over the first 48 hours of infection, across different multiplicities of infection (MOIs). Mechanistic insights are obtained using different mutant forms of RSV and siRNA strategies to probe which viral encoded proteins contribute to altered mitochondria. Our results will pave the way for possible therapeutic interventions and anti-RSV strategies in the future.