Study on the mechanism of miRNAs on liver injury in the condition of
protoscocephalus alveolarus transhepatic portal vein infection
Abstract
Echinococcus multiloculasis is a zoonotic parasitic disease caused by
Echinococcus multilocularis, which can cause liver injury, but the
mechanism of liver injury is still unclear. Here, Echinococcus
multilocularis was injected via the hepatic portal vein to establish a
mouse model of infection, and high-throughput RNA sequencing was
performed for detecting the expression of miRNAs in the liver of mice
infected with 2000 Echinococcus multilocularis after 3 months infection,
in order to understand the potential molecular mechanism of liver injury
caused by Echinococcus multilocularis infection. Overall, 71
differentially expressed miRNAs were found in liver in comparison with
control and a total of 36 mouse miRNAs with
|FC|>0.585 were screened out,
respectively. In addition, Targetscan (V5.0) and miRanda (v3.3a)
software were used to predict differential miRNAs target genes and
functional enrichment of target genes. Functional annotation showed that
“cytokine-cytokine interaction”, “ positive regulation of cytokine
production”, “ inflammatory respose”, “ leukocute activation” were
enriched in the liver of Echinococcus multilocularis-infected mice.
Moreover, the pathways “human cytomegalovirus infection”, “cysteine
and methonine metabolism”, “Notch signaling pathway” and
“ferroptosis” were involved in liver disease. Furthermore, 4 miRNAs
(mmu-miR-30e-3p, mmu-miR-203-3p, mmu-miR-125b-5p and mmu-miR-30c-2-3p)
related to liver injury were screened and verified. This study revealed
that the expression profiling of miRNAs in the livers was changed after
Echinococcus multilocularis infection, and improved our understanding of
the transcriptomic landscape of hepatic echinococcosis in mice.