Transcriptome analysis reveals the activation of neuroendocrine-immune system in shrimp hemocytes at the early stage of WSSV infection

• Published in: BMC genomics 2019-03, Vol.20 (1), p.247-247, Article 247
• Main Authors: Wang, Fuxuan, Li, Shihao, Xiang, Jianhai, Li, Fuhua
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acetylcholine; Amino acids; Animals; Annotations; Arthropod Proteins - genetics; Bioinformatics; Biosynthesis; Coding; Crosstalk; Crustaceans; Cytokines; Decapoda; Diagnosis; Disease; Diseases; DNA virus infections; Dopamine; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling - veterinary; Gene Expression Regulation; Genes; Genetic aspects; Genomes; Genomics; Hemocytes; Hemocytes - immunology; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing - veterinary; Immune system; Immunity; Infections; Innate immunity; Invertebrates; Litopenaeus vannamei; Metabolism; Molecular Sequence Annotation; Nervous system; Neuroendocrine system; Neuroendocrine-immune system; Neuroendocrinology; Neurosecretory Systems - immunology; Penaeidae - genetics; Penaeidae - immunology; Penaeidae - virology; Proteolysis; Sequence Analysis, RNA - veterinary; Shellfish; Shrimps; Signal transduction; Vertebrates; Viruses; White spot syndrome; White spot syndrome virus 1 - immunology; White spot syndrome virus 1 - pathogenicity; WSSV
• ISSN: 1471-2164; 1471-2164
• DOI: 10.1186/s12864-019-5614-4

Functional communications between nervous, endocrine and immune systems are well established in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Circulating hemocytes act as fundamental players in this crosstalk, whose functions are conserved during the evolution of the main groups of metazoans. However, the roles of the neuroendocrine-immune (NEI) system in shrimp hemocytes during pathogen infection remain largely unknown. In this study, we sequenced six cDNA libraries prepared with hemocytes from Litopenaeus vannamei which were injected by WSSV (white spot syndrome virus) or PBS for 6 h using Illumina Hiseq 4000 platform. As a result, 3444 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 3240 up-regulated genes and 204 down-regulated genes, were identified from hemocytes after WSSV infection. Among these genes, 349 DEGs were correlated with innate immunity and categorized into seven groups based on their predictive function. Interestingly, 18 genes encoded putative neuropeptide precursors were induced significantly by WSSV infection. Furthermore, some genes were mapped to several typical processes in the NEI system, including proteolytic processing of prohormones, amino acid neurotransmitter pathways, biogenic amine biosynthesis and acetylcholine signaling pathway. The data suggested that WSSV infection triggers the activation of NEI in shrimp, which throws a light on the pivotal roles of NEI system mediated by hemocytes in shrimp antiviral immunity.