Understanding interactions between EBV and human genomic variation

Abstract

The EBV has been linked to multiple human disease phenotypes and has been associated with cancers and other infections. Recently single gene analysis and genome-wide analysis studies have been exploited to uncover the human genetic variants that are linked with EBV diseases. It also suggested the substantial role of individual host genetics and also provided a clue in understanding the interaction between virus and human. Furthermore, the outcome of the EBV infection is a complex phenomenon governs by the variation in the genetic architecture of the viral and human genomes and/or the interacting environmental factors.

Therefore, this PhD work is mainly a large-scale effort towards the understanding of the human and EBV genetic architecture to uncover the role of genetic variation in EBV associated infections, disease susceptibility, immune recognition and invasion. Our results also provide a framework on the impact of human and EBV genetic variation and their unusual interactions that highlight the human genetic influence affecting viral load reflecting the clinical behavior of EBV in LCLs and the other side viral antigenic variation modulating immune response to sustain persistence infection. This EBV-human perturbation is essential to follow-up in the context of the susceptibility of individual populations to a specific EBV associated pathology.