Background
In the past 20–30 years, both the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 and low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) H9N2 viruses have been reported to cross species barriers to infect humans. However, H5N1 viruses could cause severe damage and a high death rate, but H9N2 viruses could not. In this study, we use H9N2 virus infection as a control to investigate the differential expression of mitochondrial-related proteins caused by H5N1 and H9N2 virus infections in A549 cells.
Methods
According to the determined viral infection titer, A549 cells were infected with 1 MOI (multiplicity of infection) virus, and the mitochondria were extracted after 24 hours of incubation. The lysed mitochondrial protein was analyzed by BCA method for protein concentration, SDS-PAGE preliminary analysis, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, and mass spectrometry. Select different protein spots, perform Western Blot to verify the proteomics results, and then perform GO and KEGG analysis.
Results
In the 2-D gel electrophoresis analysis, 227 protein spots were detected in the H5N1-infected group, and 169 protein spots were detected in the H9N2-infected group. After further MS identification and removal of redundancy, 32 differentially expressed proteins were identified. Compared with the H9N2 group, the H5N1-infected group had 16 upregulated mitochondrial proteins and 16 downregulated proteins. The 70 kDa heat shock protein analogs, short-chain enoyl-CoA hydratase, malate dehydrogenase, and ATP synthase were verified by Western Blot, and the results were consistent with proteomics.
Conclusions
Functional analysis indicated that these differentially expressed proteins were involved mainly in apoptosis, metabolism and the cytoskeleton. The differential expression of eight mitochondrial proteins in H5N1-infected cells resulted in decreased T cell activation, decreased antigen presentation and stress response, reduced ATP synthesis, and decreased induction of apoptosis, resulting in the higher pathogenicity of H5N1 virus than H9N2 virus.These finding may provide a basis for analyzing the pathogenesis of influenza viruses with different virulence levels, identifying anti-influenza host targets and developing new influenza vaccines.