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Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) is an important human pathogen and a paradigm for virus-induced host shut-off. Here we show that global changes in transcription and RNA processing and their impact on translation can be analysed in a single experimental setting by applying 4sU-tagging of newly transcribed RNA and ribosome profiling to lytic HSV-1 infection. Unexpectedly, we find that HSV-1 triggers the disruption of transcription termination of cellular, but not viral, genes. This results in extensive transcription for tens of thousands of nucleotides beyond poly(A) sites and into downstream genes, leading to novel intergenic splicing between exons of neighbouring cellular genes. As a consequence, hundreds of cellular genes seem to be transcriptionally induced but are not translated. In contrast to previous reports, we show that HSV-1 does not inhibit co-transcriptional splicing. Our approach thus substantially advances our understanding of HSV-1 biology and establishes HSV-1 as a model system for studying transcription termination.
Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is the most common B-cell lymphoma in children. Within the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), we performed whole genome and transcriptome sequencing of 39 sporadic BL. Here, we unravel interaction of structural, mutational, and transcriptional changes, which contribute to MYC oncogene dysregulation together with the pathognomonic IG-MYC translocation. Moreover, by mapping IGH translocation breakpoints, we provide evidence that the precursor of at least a subset of BL is a B-cell poised to express IGHA. We describe the landscape of mutations, structural variants, and mutational processes, and identified a series of driver genes in the pathogenesis of BL, which can be targeted by various mechanisms, including IG-non MYC translocations, germline and somatic mutations, fusion transcripts, and alternative splicing.