Jiang Cheng, He Cong, Kan Jing, Guan Huiting, Zhou Tao, Yang Yi
Department of Respiratory Medicine, Hubei Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, Hubei, P. R. China.
Central Lab, Shenzhen Bao'an District Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, P. R. China.
J Med Virol. 2023 Apr;95(4):e28706. doi: 10.1002/jmv.28706.
The dengue virus (DENV) is a public health threat to humans. Increased vascular permeability, coagulopathy, and hemorrhagic diathesis are the pathophysiological hallmarks of severe dengue. However, although the interferon (IFN)-mediated innate immune response forms the backbone of cell-autonomous defense against pathogens, the exact IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs) involved in DENV infection remain to be determined. The present study collected transcriptomic data sets of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from DENV patients and healthy volunteers from public data repositories. Also, lentivirus and plasmid were used to overexpress and knockdown IFI27. Initially, differentially expressed genes were filtered, and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to assess related pathways. Subsequently, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression and support vector machine-recursive feature elimination algorithms were used to screen crucial genes. The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was then employed to test diagnostic efficacy. Next, CIBERSORT was used to analyze immune infiltration in 22 immune cell subsets. Additionally, to dissect high-resolution molecular phenotypes directly from individual cells and the cellular interactions between immune cell subpopulations, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was performed. We found that the IFN-stimulated gene IFN-α-inducible protein 27 (IFI27) was highly expressed in dengue patients by leveraging bioinformatics analysis and machine learning algorithms. This finding was further validated in two independent published databases. In addition, IFI27 overexpression positively regulated DENV-2 infection, whereas IFI27 knockdown has the opposite effect. Consistently, scRNA-seq analysis supported this conclusion, along with further dissection of increased IFI27 expression mainly concentrated in monocytes and plasmacytoid dendritic cells. We also demonstrated that IFI27 inhibited dengue infection. Moreover, IFI27 was positively correlated with monocytes, M1 macrophages, activated dendritic cells, plasma cells, and resting mast cells and negatively correlated with CD8 T cells, γδ T cells, and naïve B cells. GSEA revealed that IFI27 was primarily enriched in the innate immune response, regulation of the viral life cycle, and JAK-STAT signaling pathway. Notably, the interactions between LGALS9 and its receptor CD47 were markedly increased in dengue patients compared to healthy controls, based on cell-cell communication analysis. Our findings reveal, for the first time, that IFI27 is a key ISG in DENV infection. Given that the innate immune system plays a significant role in antagonizing DENV invasion, while ISGs are the ultimate antiviral effectors, IFI27 may serve as a potential diagnostic marker and therapeutic target in dengue, although further validation is warranted.
登革病毒(DENV)对人类公共卫生构成威胁。血管通透性增加、凝血病和出血素质是重症登革热的病理生理特征。然而,尽管干扰素(IFN)介导的先天免疫反应构成了细胞自主防御病原体的核心,但参与DENV感染的确切干扰素刺激基因(ISG)仍有待确定。本研究从公共数据存储库中收集了登革热患者和健康志愿者外周血单个核细胞的转录组数据集。此外,使用慢病毒和质粒对IFI27进行过表达和敲低。首先,筛选差异表达基因,并进行基因集富集分析(GSEA)以评估相关途径。随后,使用最小绝对收缩和选择算子回归以及支持向量机递归特征消除算法筛选关键基因。然后采用受试者工作特征曲线分析来测试诊断效能。接下来,使用CIBERSORT分析22个免疫细胞亚群中的免疫浸润情况。此外,为了直接从单个细胞中剖析高分辨率分子表型以及免疫细胞亚群之间的细胞相互作用,进行了单细胞RNA测序(scRNA-seq)。我们发现,通过利用生物信息学分析和机器学习算法,干扰素刺激基因IFN-α诱导蛋白27(IFI27)在登革热患者中高表达。这一发现在两个独立的已发表数据库中得到了进一步验证。此外,IFI27过表达正向调节DENV-2感染,而IFI27敲低则产生相反的效果。同样,scRNA-seq分析支持了这一结论,同时进一步剖析了IFI27表达增加主要集中在单核细胞和浆细胞样树突状细胞中。我们还证明了IFI27抑制登革热感染。此外,IFI27与单核细胞、M1巨噬细胞、活化树突状细胞、浆细胞和静息肥大细胞呈正相关,与CD8 T细胞、γδ T细胞和初始B细胞呈负相关。GSEA显示IFI27主要富集于先天免疫反应、病毒生命周期调节和JAK-STAT信号通路。值得注意的是,基于细胞-细胞通讯分析,与健康对照相比,登革热患者中LGALS9与其受体CD47之间的相互作用显著增加。我们的研究结果首次揭示,IFI27是DENV感染中的关键ISG。鉴于先天免疫系统在对抗DENV入侵中起重要作用,而ISG是最终的抗病毒效应器,尽管需要进一步验证,但IFI27可能作为登革热的潜在诊断标志物和治疗靶点。