Screening of differentially expressed genes in CD4 + T cells in peripheral blood of 45 leprosy patients / 中华皮肤科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To detect the mRNA expression profile of CD4 + T cells in the peripheral blood of leprosy patients, and to screen and identify genes that may be closely related to the pathogenesis of leprosy. Methods:From July 2018 to May 2020, 45 leprosy patients were collected from Hunan Province, and 45 healthy volunteers from Health Examination Center of Changsha Central Hospital. CD4 + T cells were isolated from peripheral blood samples by using magnetic beads, and then RNA was extracted. Solexa sequencing was performed to screen differentially expressed genes between 6 patients and 6 healthy controls, who were randomly selected from the above subjects. Differentially expressed genes were defined as those with a fold change greater than 2 and a P value below 0.05, and then Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis was performed. Real-time fluorescence-based quantitative PCR was conducted to verify the gene expression. Results:Genetic screening revealed 4 831 newly-discovered transcripts with protein-coding potential. Eight differentially expressed genes were screened out between the two groups. Among them, the mRNA expression of CXCL8, PPBP, RPS18 and IL-1β genes was up-regulated, while the mRNA expression of RNH1, RPL39, RPL15 and AMBRA1 genes was down-regulated. Verification results of real-time fluorescence-based quantitative PCR were consistent with the above-mentioned genetic screening results. KEGG analysis showed that the differentially expressed genes between leprosy patients and healthy controls were mainly enriched in mitochondrial autophagy, autophagy-related pathways and human papillomavirus infection pathways.Conclusion:Down-regulated mRNA expression of AMBRA1 and RNH1 genes and up-regulated mRNA expression of CXCL8, PPBP and IL-1β genes were identified in patients with leprosy, which may be involved in the pathogenesis of leprosy through the mitochondrial autophagy pathway and chemokine-mediated signaling pathway, respectively.