Author(s): Zach Fears
Mentor(s): Brett E. Pickett
Institution BYU
Influenza outbreaks account for over 36,000 deaths, 200,000 hospitalizations, and costs about $10 billion in the US annually. During each flu season, influenza A virus (IAV) is more likely to be the cause of an outbreak due to its fast mutation rate, infectivity, and prevalence. In an effort to better understand the intracellular effects IAV has on individual host cells, this study set out to analyze the different metabolic pathways disrupted in a cell infected with IAV using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq), pathway enrichment, and text mining methods on a data set of MDCK cells infected with IAV. By using scRNAseq, we observed the dysregulation of expression caused by individual IAV segments and combinations of segments and saw how certain trends in pathways were disrupted as more segments were detected in the cell. By looking deeper into these trends, we can better understand the effects of responses caused by IAV at the molecular level and improve the development of therapeutics.