State Key Laboratory of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Ministry of Education, College of Animal Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China.
Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China.
BMC Genomics. 2023 Aug 16;24(1):459. doi: 10.1186/s12864-023-09564-2.
Acute heat stress could induce high mortality and cause huge economic losses in the poultry industry. Although many studies have revealed heat stress-induced injuries of multiple tissues, the main target tissue and molecular mechanism of death under acute heat stress was largely unknown. This study systematically compared the transcriptome data of five main visceral tissues in chickens to reveal the response of multiple tissues to acute heat stress and determine the main target tissue of acute heat stress, further revealing the injuries of main target tissue and their potential mechanism by combing pathological section and qRT-PCR technologies.
The transcriptome data of five visceral tissues revealed that acute heat stress broadly caused inflammatory response and damaged tissues metabolic homeostasis. Among the five tested visceral tissues, the number of differentially expressed genes in the lung was the highest, and their fold changes were the greatest, indicating that the lung was the main target tissue of acute heat stress. The results of pathological section revealed severe inflammation, emphysema and pulmonary hemorrhage in the lung under acute heat stress. Our study found that some pro-inflammatory genes, including CNTFR, FURIN, CCR6, LIFR and IL20RA, were significantly up-regulated both in the heat-stress and heat-death groups, and their fold changes in the heat-death group were significantly greater than that in the heat-stress group. We also found an anti-inflammatory gene, AvBD9, exhibiting an extremely high expression in the heat-stress group but a low expression in the heat-death group.
Our study found that acute heat stress caused multiple tissue injuries broadly and the lung was the main target tissue of acute heat stress in chicken. Acute heat stress caused a severe inflammatory response, emphysema, and pulmonary haemorrhage, The severe inflammatory response in the heat-death group was related to the up-regulation of pro-inflammatory genes and down-regulation of anti-inflammatory genes.
急性热应激可导致家禽业高死亡率和巨大经济损失。尽管许多研究已经揭示了多种组织的热应激损伤，但急性热应激下的主要靶组织和分子机制在很大程度上仍不清楚。本研究系统比较了鸡的五个主要内脏组织的转录组数据，以揭示多种组织对急性热应激的反应，并确定急性热应激的主要靶组织，通过结合病理切片和 qRT-PCR 技术进一步揭示主要靶组织的损伤及其潜在机制。
五个内脏组织的转录组数据表明，急性热应激广泛引起炎症反应和组织代谢失衡。在测试的五个内脏组织中，肺中差异表达基因的数量最多，其倍数变化最大，表明肺是急性热应激的主要靶组织。病理切片结果显示，急性热应激下肺出现严重炎症、肺气肿和肺出血。我们的研究发现，一些促炎基因，包括 CNTFR、FURIN、CCR6、LIFR 和 IL20RA，在热应激和热死亡组中均显著上调，且热死亡组的倍数变化明显大于热应激组。我们还发现抗炎基因 AvBD9 在热应激组中表达极高，但在热死亡组中表达较低。
本研究发现急性热应激广泛引起多种组织损伤，肺是鸡急性热应激的主要靶组织。急性热应激引起严重的炎症反应、肺气肿和肺出血，热死亡组的严重炎症反应与促炎基因的上调和抗炎基因的下调有关。
