The Dynamics of Gene Expression Unraveling the Immune Response of Infected by .

To further investigate the immune response of against , comparative transcriptomic analyses of the hepatopancreas were conducted on challenge and control groups at 6, 12, and 24 h post-infection (hpi), independently. A total of 51,707 high-quality unigenes were collected from the RNA-seq data, and 8060 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were discovered through paired comparisons. Among the three comparison groups, a KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed that 173 immune-related DEGs were considerably clustered into 28 immune-related pathways, including the lysosome, the phagosome, etc. Moreover, the expression levels of the four key immune-related genes (, , , and ) were evaluated at various stages following post-infection in the hepatopancreas, hemolymph, and gills. Both and genes were highly up-regulated in all three tissues at 6 hpi with ; was up-regulated in the hepatopancreas and hemolymph but down-regulated in the gill at 6 hpi, and was up-regulated in hemolymph and gill, but down-regulated in the hepatopancreas at 6 hpi. These findings lay the groundwork for understanding the immune mechanism of after contracting .