Comparative Study of Transcriptome Profile and Immune-related Genes Network Associated with Intestinal Epithelial Tissue based on Microarray Data in Poultry with Coccidiosis

Coccidiosis caused by Eimeria parasites is one of the most costly diseases in the poultry industry. Understanding how the immune system responds to coccidiosis can be helpful in designing molecular prevention and treatment methods against it. The aim of this study was to identify the important genes involved in the response of chicken’s immune system to infection with Eimeria parasites using microarray data available in public databases.

In the present study, after searching the GEO database, two microarray datasets related to coccidiosis in poultry were selected. After quality control and removal of inappropriate data, significantly up- and down-regulated genes in response to infection with Eimeria were identified using the LIMMA package in the R program. Gene ontology and KEGG pathways analysis were performed using the DAVID program. Subsequently, the protein-protein interaction network of the genes with significant expression level changes was constructed using the Cytoscape program.

The obtained results in this study showed that most of the genes that had a significant increase in expression level were associated with the innate immune system. Significantly down-regulated genes were also involved in metabolic processes. According to the outputs of present study, it seems coccidiosis has the greatest negative effect on metabolic processes, including fat metabolism, due to damage to the poultry intestine. Existing scientific evidences about a significant increase in the expression of MMP1, MMP7 and MMP9 genes revealed that collagen catabolism in coccidiosis is one of the increased cases that can be caused by damage to intestinal tissue. It seems that changing the expression level of genes affecting the metabolism of some nutrients, including fats, is one of the important effects of coccidiosis.

The obtained results of the present study can be useful in better understanding how the poultry's immune system responds to coccidiosis and the observed changes in the expression of some genes can help design treatments for this disease.