Unique genetic responses revealed in RNAseq of the spleen of chickens stimulated with lipopolysaccharide and short-term heat
Date
2017-02-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PLoS (Public Library of Science)
Abstract
Climate change and disease have large negative impacts on poultry production, but little is
known about the interactions of responses to these stressors in chickens. Fayoumi (heat and
disease resistant) and broiler (heat and disease susceptible) chicken lines were stimulated at
22 days of age, using a 2x2x2 factorial design including: breed (Fayoumi or broiler), inflammatory
stimulus (lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or saline), and temperature (35ÊC or 25ÊC). Transcriptional
changes in spleens were analyzed using RNA-sequencing on the Illumina HiSeq 2500.
Thirty-two individual cDNA libraries were sequenced (four per treatment) and an average of 22
million reads were generated per library. Stimulation with LPS induced more differentially
expressed genes (DEG, log2 fold change 2 and FDR 0.05) in the broiler (N = 283) than the
Fayoumi (N = 85), whereas heat treatment resulted in fewer DEG in broiler (N = 22) compared
to Fayoumi (N = 107). The double stimulus of LPS+heat induced the largest numbers of
changes in gene expression, for which broiler had 567 DEG and Fayoumi had 1471 DEG of
which 399 were shared between breeds. Further analysis of DEG revealed pathways impacted
by these stressors such as Remodelling of Epithelial Adherens Junctions due to heat stress,
Granulocyte Adhesion and Diapedesis due to LPS, and Hepatic Fibrosis/Hepatic Stellate Cell
Activation due to LPS+heat. The genes and pathways identified provide deeper understanding
of the response to the applied stressors and may serve as biomarkers for genetic selection for
heat and disease tolerant chickens.
Description
Publisher's PDF
Keywords
Citation
Van Goor A, Ashwell CM, Persia ME, Rothschild MF, Schmidt CJ, Lamont SJ (2017) Unique genetic responses revealed in RNA-seq of the spleen of chickens stimulated with lipopolysaccharide and short-term heat. PLoS ONE 12(2): e0171414. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0171414