Identification of key genes fluctuated induced by avian leukemia virus (ALV-J) infection in chicken cells

Guohong Chen, Zhiteng Li, Shuai Su, Guobin Chang, Lingling Qiu, Pengfei Zhu, Yang Zhang, Qi Xu

Avian leukemia subgroup J (ALV-J) is one of the most detrimental neoplastic diseases in poultry production. However, the differences between somatic cells and immune cells post-infection remain poorly understood. The aim of our study was to detect the different responses in chicken to infection with ALV-J in different cell lines. In this study, we detected transcriptome expression changes during infection with ALV-J in chicken embryo fibroblast (CEF) and HD11 cell lines. RNA-Seq was used to determine the expression levels of mRNA transcripts from the two cell types after infection with ALV-J at 1, 4, and 7 dpi, and gene ontology analyses were used to cluster differentially expressed genes into pathways. Quantitative real-time PCR confirmed the expression of 336 and 269 differentially expressed genes in CEF and HD11 lines, respectively, involved in innate immunity (OASL, CCL4), adaptive immunity (LYZ, CD72), apoptosis and autophagy (WISP2, COMP), inflammation (JSC, IL8), and tumorgenesis (PCNA, GPX3). The notable signal transduction pathways included the PPARs signaling pathway and ECM-receptor interactions in CEF, and the Toll-like receptor, NOD-like receptor, and RIG-I-like receptor signaling pathways in HD11. To our knowledge, this is the first study to use high-throughput sequencing methods to investigate viral infection in different cell types. The results of the present study form a foundation for developing potential biological markers for viral infection.