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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Ames, Iowa » National Animal Disease Center » Virus and Prion Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #356021

Research Project: Intervention Strategies to Control Endemic and New and Emerging Viral Diseases of Swine

Location: Virus and Prion Research

Title: e-PIG-enetics: porcine sncRNA response to highly pathogenic PRRSV

Author
item FLEMING, DAMARIUS - Orise Fellow
item Miller, Laura

Submitted to: International Symposium of Animal Functional Genomics
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/20/2018
Publication Date: 11/12/2018
Citation: Fleming, D.S., Miller, L.C. 2018. e-PIG-enetics: porcine sncRNA response to highly pathogenic PRRSV[abstract]. International Symposium of Animal Functional Genomics. abstract No. 14.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus (PRRSV) is a single stranded RNA virus that infects pigs and causes losses to the pork industry reaching upwards of a billion dollars in the USA annually. Recently the United States has begun to see an increase in type 2 PRRSV strains of higher virulence comparable to highly pathogenic PRRSV (HP-PRRSV) first described in China in 2006. The high pathogenicity of these strains drastically alters host immune responses indicating underlying changes in gene and regulatory element expression profiles. The actions of small non-coding regulatory RNAs (sncRNA), and how they influence host immunologic and metabolic functions, are relatively unexplored. In order to investigate the impact sncRNA expression has on host regulation during PRRSV infections, this study examined host differential expression of miRNA and tRNA molecules during infection with a highly pathogenic PRRSV (HP-PRRSV) strain. We accomplished this using transcriptomic analysis of whole blood taken from either control or infected pigs at several days post inoculation. The analysis returned a total of 149 statistically significant (FDR less than or equal to 0.15) miRNAs and tRNAs that were evaluated for possible antiviral effects. The results indicated that HP-PRRSV infection effects host regulation at the epigenetic level through changes in miRNA and tRNA expression that target and influence the function of host immune, metabolic, and structural pathways.