Identification of Chicken Pulmonary miRNAs Targeting PB1, PB1-F2, and N40 Genes of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus H5N1 in Silico

Abstract

Highly pathogenic Avian influenza (HPAI) is a notifiable viral disease caused by avian influenza type A viruses of the Orthomyxoviridae family. Type A influenza genome consists of eight segments of negative-sense RNA. RNA segment 2 encodes three proteins, PB1, PB1-F2, and N40, which are translated from the same mRNA by ribosomal leaky scanning and reinitiation. Since these proteins are critical for viral replication and pathogenesis, targeting their expression can be one of the approaches to control and resist HPAI. MicroRNAs are short noncoding RNAs that regulate a variety of biological processes such as cell growth, tissue differentiation, apoptosis, and viral infection. In this study, a set of 300 miRNAs expressed in chicken lungs were screened against the HPAI virus (H5N1) segment 2 with different screening parameter like thermodynamic stability of heteroduplex, seed sequence complementarity, conserved target sequence, and target-site accessibility for identifying miRNAs that can potentially target the transcript of segment 2 of H5N1. Chicken miRNAs gga-mir-133c, gga-mir-1710, and gga-mir-146c* are predicted to target the expression of PB1, PB1-F2, and N40 proteins. This indicates that chicken has genetic potential to resist/tolerate H5N1 infection and these can be suitably exploited in designing strategies for control of avian influenza in chicken.

MicroRNA-27a Promotes the Proliferation and Invasiveness of Colon Cancer Cells by Targeting SFRP1 through the Wnt/β-Catenin Signaling Pathway

“…MiRNAs are short (18∼25 nucleotides), endogenous non-coding molecules that cause translational repression or mRNA cleavage by binding to the 3’-untranslated regions (3’-UTRs) of target mRNAs [7, 10]. MiRNAs have been demonstrated to regulate many cellular processes, including differentiation, proliferation and apoptosis [11-13].…”

Epigenetic Regulation by Non-Coding RNAs in the Avian Immune System

“…Several RNA-seq researches had revealed the expression profile and associated pathways in response to AIV infection in different tissues and cells in avian [131][132][133][134]. According to the bioinformatics analysis of the expression and the associated pathways of the DEmiRNAs in those researches, miR-34a, miR-122-2, miR-122-1, miR-206, miR-146a, miR-155, miR-1719, miR-1599, miR-1594, miR-451, miR-146, miR-1576, miR-1636, miR-206, miR-142-5p, miR-17-5p, miR-19b miR-133c, miR-1710, miR-181a/b, miR-30b/c/e, and miR-455 were considered to be strong candidate miRNAs related to the immune response of AIV infection in chickens [131][132][133][134].…”

“…The genome of type A influenza includes eight segments and each segment-encoded protein is crucial for viral replication and pathogenesis [133]. miRNAs interact with virus genes is also one approach for miRNA to control or resist AIV.…”

Identification of a Universal Antigen Epitope of Influenza A Virus using Peptide Microarray

“…IAV is negative-strand RNA virus and belongs to the Orthomyxoviridae. It is composed of eight gene segments that encode at least 17 different kinds of proteins [5][6][7]. Hemagglutinin (HA) is main envelope glycoprotein and can be cleaved into the HA1 and HA2 subunit.…”