Transcriptome profiling of the peripheral blood mononuclear cells following PRRSV vaccination in Pietrain pig

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a devastating viral disease affecting swine production, health and welfare throughout the world. Vaccination has been considered as one of the most economic tools for PRRS control. A synergistic action of the innate and the adaptive immune system of host is essential for developing a durable protective immunity to vaccine antigen. The peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) play central role in immune system and are able to display gene expression patterns characteristics for certain infection. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the global transcriptome profiles of PBMCs to characterize the innate and the adaptive immune response to PRRS Virus (PRRSV) vaccine in Pietrain pigs. We employed nine Afryrnetrix gene chip porcine gene 1.0 ST array for the transcriptome profiling of PBMCs collected from three female piglets at immediately before (D0), at one (D1) and 28 d (D28) post PRRSV vaccination given at 4 wk (D0) of their age. Two pairwise contrasts were tested to characterize transcriptome alterations associated with the innate immune response (D1 vs. D0) and the adaptive immune response (D28 vs. D0). Normalization and statistical analysis of microarray data was performed with the 'oligo' and 'limmna' R/Bioconductor package. With FDR < 0.05 and log2 fold change ± 1.5 as cut off criteria, 83 and 53 transcripts were found to be differentially expressed in PBMCs during innate and adaptive response, respectively. The microarray expression results were technically validated by qRT-PCR. The gene ontology (GO) terms such as viral life cycle, regulation of lymphocyte activation, cytokine activity and inflammatory response were enriched during the innate immune response. The GO terms enriched during adaptive response includes cytolysis, T cell mediated cytotoxicity, immunoglobulin production. Significant enrichment of cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, signaling by interleukins, viral mRNA translation. IFN-γ pathway and AP-1 transcription factor network pathways was indicating the involvement of altered genes in the antiviral defense. Network analysis has detected four module were functionally involved with functional network of innate immune transcriptional response and five modules were detected for adaptive immune responses. The innate immune transcriptional network found to be regulated by LCK, STAT3, ATP5B, UBB and RSP17. While TGFβ, IL7R, RAD21, SP1 and GZMB are responsible for coor