Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection
Diseases of marine mammals can be difficult to diagnose because of their life history and protected status. Stranded marine mammals have been a particularly useful resource to discover and comprehend the diseases that plague these top predators. Additionally, advancements in high-throughput sequenci...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5182994 2023-05-15T17:58:57+02:00 Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca L. 2016-12-22 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182994/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2819 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182994/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2819 ©2016 Rosales and Vega Thurber http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. CC-BY Bioinformatics Text 2016 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2819 2017-01-01T01:07:47Z Diseases of marine mammals can be difficult to diagnose because of their life history and protected status. Stranded marine mammals have been a particularly useful resource to discover and comprehend the diseases that plague these top predators. Additionally, advancements in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) has contributed to the discovery of novel pathogens in marine mammals. In this study, we use a combination of HTS and stranded harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) to better understand a known and unknown brain disease. To do this, we used transcriptomics to evaluate brain tissues from seven neonatal harbor seals that expired from an unknown cause of death (UCD) and compared them to four neonatal harbor seals that had confirmed phocine herpesvirus (PhV-1) infections in the brain. Comparing the two disease states we found that UCD animals showed a significant abundance of fatty acid metabolic transcripts in their brain tissue, thus we speculate that a fatty acid metabolic dysregulation contributed to the death of these animals. Furthermore, we were able to describe the response of four young harbor seals with PhV-1 infections in the brain. PhV-1 infected animals showed a significant ability to mount an innate and adaptive immune response, especially to combat viral infections. Our data also suggests that PhV-1 can hijack host pathways for DNA packaging and exocytosis. This is the first study to use transcriptomics in marine mammals to understand host and viral interactions and assess the death of stranded marine mammals with an unknown disease. Furthermore, we show the value of applying transcriptomics on stranded marine mammals for disease characterization. Text Phoca vitulina PubMed Central (PMC) PeerJ 4 e2819 |
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Bioinformatics Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca L. Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
topic_facet |
Bioinformatics |
description |
Diseases of marine mammals can be difficult to diagnose because of their life history and protected status. Stranded marine mammals have been a particularly useful resource to discover and comprehend the diseases that plague these top predators. Additionally, advancements in high-throughput sequencing (HTS) has contributed to the discovery of novel pathogens in marine mammals. In this study, we use a combination of HTS and stranded harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) to better understand a known and unknown brain disease. To do this, we used transcriptomics to evaluate brain tissues from seven neonatal harbor seals that expired from an unknown cause of death (UCD) and compared them to four neonatal harbor seals that had confirmed phocine herpesvirus (PhV-1) infections in the brain. Comparing the two disease states we found that UCD animals showed a significant abundance of fatty acid metabolic transcripts in their brain tissue, thus we speculate that a fatty acid metabolic dysregulation contributed to the death of these animals. Furthermore, we were able to describe the response of four young harbor seals with PhV-1 infections in the brain. PhV-1 infected animals showed a significant ability to mount an innate and adaptive immune response, especially to combat viral infections. Our data also suggests that PhV-1 can hijack host pathways for DNA packaging and exocytosis. This is the first study to use transcriptomics in marine mammals to understand host and viral interactions and assess the death of stranded marine mammals with an unknown disease. Furthermore, we show the value of applying transcriptomics on stranded marine mammals for disease characterization. |
format |
Text |
author |
Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca L. |
author_facet |
Rosales, Stephanie M. Vega Thurber, Rebecca L. |
author_sort |
Rosales, Stephanie M. |
title |
Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
title_short |
Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
title_full |
Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
title_fullStr |
Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
title_full_unstemmed |
Brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
title_sort |
brain transcriptomes of harbor seals demonstrate gene expression patterns of animals undergoing a metabolic disease and a viral infection |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182994/ https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2819 |
genre |
Phoca vitulina |
genre_facet |
Phoca vitulina |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182994/ http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2819 |
op_rights |
©2016 Rosales and Vega Thurber http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2819 |
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4 |
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e2819 |
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1766167681111687168 |