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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Athens, Georgia » U.S. National Poultry Research Center » Avian Disease and Oncology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #313032
Title: The conservation and signatures of lincRNAs in Marek’s disease of chicken

Author
item HE, YANGHUA - University Of Maryland
item DING, YI - University Of Maryland
item ZHAN, FEI - University Of Maryland
item Zhang, Huanmin
item HAN, BO - China Agricultural University
item HU, GANGQING - National Institutes Of Health (NIH)
item ZHAO, KEJI - National Institutes Of Health (NIH)
item YANG, NING - China Agricultural University
item YU, YING - China Agricultural University
item MAO, LI - University Of Maryland
item SONG, JIUZHOU - University Of Maryland

Submitted to: Scientific Reports
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/23/2015
Publication Date: 10/16/2015
Citation: He, Y., Ding, Y., Zhan, F., Zhang, H., Han, B., Hu, G., Zhao, K., Yang, N., Yu, Y., Mao, L., Song, J. 2015. The conservation and signatures of lincRNAs in Marek’s disease of chicken. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/srep15184.

Interpretive Summary: The genomes of multicellular organisms are characterized not only by its sizes in terms of numbers of nucleotides but also by pervasive expression of different types of coding and non-coding RNAs, which modulate and maintain the complex biological systems of each organism including development and health conditions. Long intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs) are a relatively new class of non-coding RNAs that were found in close association with a number of cancers and other diseases in mammals. This study is one of first to explore lincRNAs and disease resistance in chicken. By employing state of the art in genomics study, RNA samples from disease resistant and susceptible lines of chickens were sequenced. Use of multi-bioinformatics tools in examination of the large RNA sequence data, over 1,000 lincRNAs were identified in chickens. Moreover, distinct lincRNA expression signatures were observed between the MD resistant and susceptible lines of chickens. The findings from this study paves a new approach for functional studies on genetic mechanism underlying disease resistance in chicken.

Technical Abstract: Long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) associated with a number of cancers and other diseases have been identified in mammals, but they are still formidable to be comprehensively identified and characterized. Marek’s disease (MD) is a T cell lymphoma of chickens induced by Marek’s disease virus (MDV). Here, we used a MD chicken model to develop a precise pipeline for identifying lincRNAs and to determine the roles of lincRNAs in T cell tumorigenesis. More than 1,000 lincRNA loci were identified in chicken bursa. Computational analyses demonstrated that lincRNAs are conserved among different species such as human, mouse and chicken. The putative lincRNAs were found to be associated with a wide range of biological functions including immune responses. Interestingly, we observed distinct lincRNA expression signatures in bursa between MD resistant and susceptible lines. One of the candidate lincRNAs, termed linc-satb1, was found to play a crucial role in MD immune response by regulating a nearby protein-coding gene SATB1. Thus, our results manifested that lincRNAs may exert considerable influence on MDV-induced T cell tumorigenesis and provide a rich resource for hypothesis-driven functional studies to reveal genetic mechanisms underlying susceptibility to tumorigenesis.