Authors
Miller, M., Moradpour, S., Geiler, B. W., Mahmud, J., Decatur, W., Chan, G. C.
Abstract
Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a major cause of organ disease among immunonaive and immunocompromised individuals. HCMV infection stimulates the survival of normally short-lived circulating monocytes, allowing these blood cells to mediate the dissemination of the virus from the initial point of infection to distant organ sites. We previously showed that HCMV induces a non-canonical phosphorylation of Akt within infected monocytes that activates the stress response transcription factor Heat Shock Factor 1 (HSF1). In this study, we demonstrate that HSF1 is necessary for the survival of HCMV-infected monocytes using both pharmacological and genetic approaches. In contrast, HSF1 inhibition had minimal effect on the viability of uninfected cells, indicating the specific involvement of HSF1 on the survival of infected monocytes. Surprisingly, the aberrant activation of HSF1 by HCMV did not trigger nuclear relocalization, suggesting that HSF1's regulation of monocyte viability occurs within the cytoplasm. Indeed, we found that HCMV-activated, cytoplasmic HSF1 directly binds to mTOR, a critical component of the mTORC1 complex involved in the regulation of mRNA translation. SUnSET (Surface Sensing of Translation) assays revealed HCMV-activated HSF1 increases mRNA translation through mTORC1. Ribosomal profiling identified the increased translation of a selected subset of pro-survival transcripts, including cIAP2, which we validated to selectively stimulate the survival of HCMV-infected monocytes. Taken together, these data demonstrate that the non-canonical activation of HSF1 in infected monocytes drives mTORC1-dependent translation of antiapoptotic transcripts, ensuring the survival and dissemination of infected monocytes.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 24 Jul 2026.
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