CSIRO Health & Biosecurity, Australian Animal Health Laboratory, Geelong 3220, Australia.
School of Applied Sciences, RMIT University, Bundoora 3083, Australia.
Viruses. 2019 Jun 4;11(6):513. doi: 10.3390/v11060513.
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is an emerging pathogen around the world and causes significant morbidity in patients. A single amino acid mutation in the envelope protein of CHIKV has led to a shift in vector preference towards . While mosquitoes are known to mount an antiviral immune response post-infection, molecular interactions during the course of infection at the tissue level remain largely uncharacterised. We performed whole transcriptome analysis on dissected midguts of infected with CHIKV to identify differentially expressed genes. For this, RNA was extracted at two days post-infection (2-dpi) from pooled midguts. We initially identified 25 differentially expressed genes (-value < 0.05) when mapped to a reference transcriptome. Further, multiple differentially expressed genes were identified from a custom transcriptome, which was assembled using the reads that did not align with the reference genome. Thirteen of the identified transcripts, possibly involved in immunity, were validated by qRT-PCR. Homologues of seven of these genes were also found to be significantly upregulated in midguts 2 dpi, indicating a conserved mechanism at play. These results will help us to characterise the molecular interaction between and CHIKV and can be utilised to reduce the impact of this viral infection.
基孔肯雅热病毒（CHIKV）是一种在全球范围内新出现的病原体，可导致患者出现严重的发病率。CHIKV 包膜蛋白中的单个氨基酸突变导致了对 的偏向性。尽管众所周知蚊子在感染后会产生抗病毒免疫反应，但在组织水平上感染过程中的分子相互作用在很大程度上仍未得到描述。我们对感染了 CHIKV 的 dissected midguts 进行了全转录组分析，以鉴定差异表达的基因。为此，在感染后两天（2-dpi）从pooled midguts 中提取了 RNA。当映射到参考转录组时，我们最初鉴定出 25 个差异表达基因（-value < 0.05）。此外，还从使用未与参考基因组对齐的reads 组装的定制转录本中鉴定出多个差异表达基因。通过 qRT-PCR 验证了 13 个可能与免疫有关的鉴定转录本。这些基因的 7 个同源物也在 2 dpi 的 中被发现显著上调，表明存在保守的作用机制。这些结果将有助于我们描述 和 CHIKV 之间的分子相互作用，并可用于减少这种病毒感染的影响。
