Dual RNA-Seq Unveils Gene Functions During Host-Pathogen Interactions With .

is a temperature-dependent opportunistic pathogen which is associated with a variety of diseases in fish. During the development of "white nodules" disease, the expression of in was found to be significantly up-regulated at its virulent temperature of 18°C. The infection of -RNAi strain resulted in the onset time delay, reduction in mortality and infection symptoms in spleen of , and affected the bacterial tissue colonization. In order to reveal the effect of silencing of on the virulence regulation in and immune response in , dual RNA-seq was performed and a pathogen-host integration network was constructed. Our results showed that infection induced the expression of host genes related to immune response, but attenuated the expression of bacterial virulence genes. Novel integration was found between host immune genes and bacterial virulence genes, while , and played key roles in the network. Further analysis with GeneMANIA indicated that and might play key roles during the -dependent virulence regulation, which was in accordance with the reduced biofilm production, motility and virulence in -RNAi strain. Meanwhile, and were found to play key roles during the defense against , while , and were important targets for attacking to the host.