Date of Graduation

12-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Cell & Molecular Biology (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Biological Sciences

Advisor/Mentor

Byung-Whi Kong

Committee Member

Gisela F. Erf

Second Committee Member

Kaiming Ye

Third Committee Member

Young Min Kwon

Keywords

Biological sciences, Gene expression, Host-virus interactions, Immortal cell line, Infectious laryngotracheitis virus, Microarray

Abstract

Infectious laryngotracheitis virus (ILTV; Gallid herpesvirus 1) causes upper respiratory diseases in mainly chickens and exhibits 90-100% of high morbidity and up to 70% of mortality, resulting in huge economic losses in the poultry industry worldwide.

To study host-ILTV interactions, the changes in genome-wide gene expressions in response to wild-type and vaccine ILTV infections in primary chicken embryo lung cells were investigated using microarray analysis. Results provide crucial insights into host cell pathogenic and immunogenic responses against wild-type and vaccine ILTV infections. Using microarray method and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) bioinformatics tool, 273 and 306 differentially expressed genes were identified responding to wild-type and vaccine ILTV infections, respectively. Further integrated analysis to compare differentially expressed genes revealed that eight host genes including coagulation factor II (thrombin) receptor-like 1 (F2RL1), bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2), inhibitor of NF-kB (IkB) kinase subunit beta (IKBKB) interacting protein (IKBIP), thymidylate synthetase (TYMS), chromosome 8 open reading frame 79 (C8orf79), coagulation factor X (F10), prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2) and neuropeptide Y (NPY) were regulated differently between wild-type and vaccine ILTV infections in an opposite direction, suggesting that these host factors may play important roles in host immune responses against ILTV infection. In addition, the transcriptome changes of ILTV encoding genes were studied during infection time courses using quantitative PCR. In this study, infected-cells polypeptide (ICP) 4 showed the highest expression level and UL21 and UL42 showed unique expression patterns, unlike most of the other ILTV gene which exhibited continuous elevation of expression during lytic infection. Kinetic analysis of ILTV gene expression in host cells may provide new knowledge to understand ILTV pathogenesis.

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