Fasciola hepatica Infection in Cattle: Analyzing Responses of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMC) Using a Transcriptomics Approach

The parasitic helminth Fasciola hepatica (liver fluke) causes economic loss to the livestock industry globally and also causes zoonotic disease. New control strategies such as vaccines are urgently needed, due to the rise of drug resistance in parasite populations. Vaccine development requires a comprehensive understanding of the immunological events during infection. Previous in vivo studies by our group have investigated global differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in ovine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) in response to both acute and chronic F. hepatica infection. This work demonstrated that pathways involved in the pathogenesis of ovine fasciolosis included fibrosis, inhibition of macrophage nitric oxide production, and antibody isotype switching, among others. Transcriptomic changes in PBMC populations following F. hepatica infection in cattle, in which the disease phenotype is quite different, have not yet been examined. Using RNA sequencing we investigated gene expression changes in PBMC isolated from 9 non-infected and 11 F. hepatica-experimentally-infected calves immediately before infection, at 1 week and at 14 weeks post-infection. Longitudinal time-course comparisons between groups revealed 21 and 1,624 DEGs driven exclusively by F. hepatica infection in cattle at acute and chronic stages, respectively. These results show that fewer DEGs at the acute stage of infection can be identified in cattle, as compared with sheep. In addition, the log2 fold-change...
Source: Frontiers in Immunology - Category: Allergy & Immunology Source Type: research