Identification of gene expression profiles in Leishmania major infection by integrated bioinformatics analyses

Özlem Ulusan; Ufuk Mert; Aygül Sadıqova; Sercan Öztürk; Ayse Caner

doi:10.1016/j.actatropica.2020.105517

Identification of gene expression profiles in Leishmania major infection by integrated bioinformatics analyses

Acta Trop. 2020 Aug:208:105517. doi: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2020.105517. Epub 2020 Apr 28.

Authors

Özlem Ulusan¹, Ufuk Mert², Aygül Sadıqova³, Sercan Öztürk⁴, Ayse Caner⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Parasitology, Ege University Medical School, Izmir, Turkey.
² Department of Basic Oncology, Ege University, Institute of Health Sciences, Izmir, Turkey.
³ Infectious Disease Division, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
⁴ Departments of Computer Science, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey.
⁵ Department of Parasitology, Ege University Medical School, Izmir, Turkey; Department of Basic Oncology, Ege University, Institute of Health Sciences, Izmir, Turkey; Department of Bioinformatics, Ege University, Institute of Health Sciences, Izmir, Turkey; Departments of Experimental Therapeutics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA. Electronic address: acaner@mdanderson.org.

PMID: 32360239
DOI: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2020.105517

Abstract

Gene expression profiling in mouse models of leishmaniasis has given useful information to understand the molecular pathways active in lesions and to discover new diagnostic/therapeutic targets. Although the host response plays a critical role in protection from leishmaniasis and promoting disease severity, there are still unexplained aspects in the mechanism of non-healing cutaneous lesions, which need biomarkers for both targeted- therapy and diagnosis. To address this, transcriptional profiling of the skin lesions obtained from BALB/c mice infected with Leishmania major and healthy skin from naïve mice were evaluated by bioinformatics analysis, and then the results were validated by Revers Transcriptase-PCR. Five genes among the up-regulated differentially expressed genes named FCGR4, CCL4, CXCL9, Arg1 and IL-1β were found to have relatively high diagnostic value for CL due to L. major. Pathway analysis revealed that Triggering Receptor Expressed On Myeloid Cells 1 (TREM1) signaling pathways are active in cutaneous lesions, providing new insights for the understanding and treatment of leishmaniasis.

Keywords: BALB/c mice; Gene expression; Leishmania major (L. major); Macrophages; TREM signaling.