Expression patterns of innate immunity-related genes in response to polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (poly[I:C]) stimulation in DF-1 chicken fibroblast cells

Polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (poly[I:C]) can stimulate Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) signaling pathways. In this study, DF-1 cells were treated with poly(I:C) at various concentrations and time points to examine the comparative expression patterns of innate immune response genes. The viability of DF-1 cells decreased from 77.41% to 38.68% when cells were treated different dose of poly(I:C) from 0.1 µg/mL to 100 µg/mL for 24 h respectively. The expressions of , and were increased in dose- and time-dependent manners by poly(I:C) treatment. On the contrary, the expression patterns of ( ), , ( ), ( ), and were varied; and were increasingly expressed whereas the expressions of and were decreased in a dose-dependent manner after they were early induced. In time-dependent analysis, expression was significantly upregulated from 3 h to 24 h, whereas and expressions settled down from 6 h to 24 h after poly(I:C) treatment although they were induced at early time from 1 h to 3 h. Poly(I:C) treatment rapidly increased the expression of from 3 h to 6 h with a plateau at 6 h and then the expression of was dramatically decreased until 24 h after poly(I:C) treatment although the expression level was still higher than the non-treated control. These results may provide the basis for understanding host response to viral infection and its mimicry system in chickens.