Key result
Marek's disease virus alters ~1200 alternative splicing events in tumorous chicken spleens vs uninfected controls.
Why the study?
Marek's disease is an oncogenic virus-induced disease causing economic loss, and the role of alternative splicing events in Marek's disease needed investigation.
p-value: p=< 0.05
MDV infection in chickens significantly alters alternative splicing events, particularly in tumorous spleens, providing insights into viral oncogenesis and lymphoma transformation.
AS events mapped in MDV tumors via RNA-Seq; leaves open functional roles in viral oncogenesis and therapeutic targeting.
Marek’s disease (MD) was an immunosuppression disease induced by Marek’s disease virus (MDV). MD caused huge economic loss to the global poultry industry, but it also provided an ideal model for studying diseases induced by the oncogenic virus. Alternative splicing (AS) simultaneously produced different isoform transcripts, which are involved in various diseases and individual development. To investigate AS events in MD, RNA-Seq was performed in tumorous spleens (TS), spleens from the survivors (SS) without any lesion after MDV infection, and non-infected chicken spleens (NS). In this study, 32,703 and 25,217 AS events were identified in TS and SS groups with NS group as the control group, and 1198, 1204, and 348 differently expressed (DE) AS events (p-value < 0.05 and FDR < 0.05) were identified in TS vs. NS, TS vs. SS, SS vs. NS, respectively. Additionally, Function enrichment analysis showed that ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, p53 signaling pathway, and phosphatidylinositol signaling system were significantly enriched (p-value < 0.05). Small structural variations including SNP and indel were analyzed based on RNA-Seq data, and it showed that the TS group possessed more variants on the splice site region than those in SS and NS groups, which might cause more AS events in the TS group. Combined with previous circRNA data, we found that 287 genes could produce both circular and linear RNAs, which suggested these genes were more active in MD lymphoma transformation. This study has expanded the understanding of the MDV infection process and provided new insights for further analysis of resistance/susceptibility mechanisms.
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Wang et al. (2021) studied Marek's disease. Marek's disease virus (MDV) infection vs. Non-infected chicken spleens was evaluated on Differently expressed alternative splicing (AS) events (p=< 0.05). Marek's disease virus infection in chickens resulted in 1198 differently expressed alternative splicing events in tumorous spleens compared to non-infected controls (p<0.05).
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