RNA Sequencing Analysis of Chicken Cecum Tissues Following Eimeria tenella Infection in Vivo.

Xiaohui Wang,Jinyu Wang,Huiqiang Shi,Guojun Dai,Wenbin Zou,Hailiang Yu,Yuxin Lin,Genxi Zhang,Kaizhou Xie,Tao Zhang

doi:10.3390/genes10060420

Abstract

Eimeria tenella (E. tenella) is one of the most frequent and pathogenic species of protozoan parasites of the genus Eimeria that exclusively occupies the cecum, exerting a high economic impact on the poultry industry. To investigate differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the cecal tissue of Jinghai yellow chickens infected with E. tenella, the molecular response process, and the immune response mechanism during coccidial infection, RNA-seq was used to analyze the cecal tissues of an E. tenella infection group (JS) and an uninfected group (JC) on the seventh day post-infection. The DEGs were screened by functional and pathway enrichment analyses. The results indicated that there were 5477 DEGs (p-value < 0.05) between the JS and the JC groups, of which 2942 were upregulated, and 2535 were downregulated. GO analysis indicated that the top 30 significantly enriched GO terms mainly involved signal transduction, angiogenesis, inflammatory response, and blood vessel development. KEGG analysis revealed that the top significantly enriched signaling pathways included focal adhesion, extracellular matrix–receptor interaction, and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor. The key DEGs in these pathways included ANGPTL4, ACSL5, VEGFC, MAPK10, and CD44. These genes play an important role in the infection of E. tenella. This study further enhances our understanding of the molecular mechanism of E. tenella infection in chickens.

Highlights

Avian coccidiosis, caused by seven species of protozoan parasites of the genus Eimeria, is one of the most important livestock diseases in the world [1], resulting in high economic impacts by reducing animal performance and lowering productivity [2]
The results demonstrated that the fold change of the upregulation and downregulation of the 10 selected differentially expressed genes (DEGs) was basically the same using two different detection methods, and the correlation coefficient of the two reached 0.988 (R2 = 0.975), which was highly significant (p < 0.000)
GO and KEGG analysis showed that the upregulated genes were mainly involved in immunity and defense, apoptosis and cell death, differentiation, signal transduction, and extracellular matrix (ECM) composition, while the downregulated genes mainly related to the membrane components and some transporters

Summary

Introduction

Avian coccidiosis, caused by seven species of protozoan parasites of the genus Eimeria, is one of the most important livestock diseases in the world [1], resulting in high economic impacts by reducing animal performance and lowering productivity [2]. Coccidiostats and live vaccines are the two major coccidiosis control strategies [3]. Extensive use of coccidiostats has resulted in drug resistance and raised public concern for food safety because of its chemical residues in food-producing animals [4]. The use of live vaccines has the risk of causing reversion to a pathogenic strain [5]. Genetic selection of coccidiosis-resistant lines by novel molecular genetics and functional genomics tools provides the potential to radically address this problem [7]. Our understanding of how chickens respond to coccidian infection at the molecular level is limited [8]

Methods

Results

Conclusion