Effect of immune gene silencing in WSSV infected tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon

White spot syndrome virus, continues to cause huge economic loss to aquaculture industry. In the absence of effective therapeutics to control WSSV, it is important to understand the host pathogen interaction at the molecular level. Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) cDNA library was constructed which led to identification of several differentially expressed genes in response to WSSV infection in Penaeus monodon. The genes expressed in SSH cDNA library of shrimp gill and gut tissues belonged to a wide range of biological functions. The three differentially expressed genes, Single von Willebrand factor type C domain protein (pmSVC), P53 protein gene (pmP53) and ADP ribosylation factor (pmArf) were up-regulated against WSSV infection and were further characterized by gene silencing to study the role of these shrimp immune genes on WSSV multiplication. The sequence-specific knock down of pmSVC, pmP53 and pmArf using the dsRNA revealed that in pmSVC-dsRNA inoculated shrimps WSSV replication was more with increased viral copy numbers when compared with pmP53-dsRNA and pmArf -dsRNA inoculated shrimps. The varied response of immune genes to WSSV infection, indicated that host genes may either inhibit virus replication to some extent or might act as a target to facilitate viral pathogenesis. •Differentially expressed immune genes, pmSVC, pmP53 and pmArf were characterized for immune response by RNAi.•The gene silencing effect on WSSV infection was validated by estimating WSSV viral copy numbers in WSSV challenged shrimps.•The sequence-specific knock down of pmSVC, pmP53 and pmArf revealed varied response to WSSV replication.