African swine fever virus infected host tissue transcriptome signatures revealed differential expression of associated oncogenes

Abstract

Abstract African swine fever (ASF) is a continual economical threat to the global piggery sector. The host immune evasion caused by African swine fever virus (ASFV) is well understood. However, the ASF virus's significance in oncogenesis is uncertain. In the present study, ASFV infected kidney tissue samples were subjected for Illumina based transcriptome analysis. A total of 2010 upregulated and 149 downregulated genes were identified to be differentially expressed (p-value < 0.05) in ASFV infected porcine kidney tissues. Review of literature survey revealed that the majority of the differentially expressed host genes in death animal tissue samples were related with oncogenic properties. Protein-protein network analysis idented that pathway associated with functional enrichment for basal cell carcinoma, breast cancer and gastric cancer. Host-viral interaction revealed that upregulated oncogenic RELA (p65 transcription factor) protein of sus scrofa can interact with A238L protein of ASFV. qRT-PCR experiments for different up and down regulated oncogenes, including MEX-3D, MAIP1, ZNF618, CCDC105, MOSPD2, FAM98B, FGFR4, GRKs, SPDYC, and SOCS, were done using H3F3A as the housekeeping gene to assess the correctness of RNA-Seq data. The levels of gene expression indicated by qRT-PCR were extremely similar to those determined by RNA-Seq. Differentially expressed host oncogene profiles in ASFV clinical symptoms may be a good indicator for the integration of additional repositories in the pathogenesis of ASFV. However, further research is needed to produce proof of concept for ASFV's oncogenic characteristic.