Transmission dynamics of human herpesvirus 6A, 6B and 7 from whole genome sequences of families

While hundreds of thousands of human whole genome sequences (WGS) have been collected in the effort to better understand genetic determinants of disease, these whole genome sequences have less frequently been used to study another major determinant of human health: the human virome. Using the unmapped reads from WGS of over 1000 families, we present insights into the human blood DNA virome, focusing particularly on human herpesvirus (HHV) 6A, 6B, and 7. In addition to extensively cataloguing the viruses detected in WGS of human whole blood and lymphoblastoid cell lines, we use the family structure of our dataset to show that household drives transmission of several viruses, and identify the Mendelian inheritance patterns characteristic of inherited chromsomally integrated human herpesvirus 6 (iciHHV-6). Consistent with prior studies, we find that 0.6% of our dataset’s population has iciHHV, and we locate candidate integration sequences for these cases. We document genetic diversity within exogenous and integrated HHV species and within integration sites of HHV-6. Finally, in the first observation of its kind, we present evidence that suggests widespread de novo HHV-6B integration and HHV-7 integration and reactivation in lymphoblastoid cell lines. These findings show that the unmapped read space of WGS is a promising source of data for virology research. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12985-022-01941-9.