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In recent years, increasing interest has focused on natural components extracted from plants, among which plant polysaccharides as natural immunomodulators that can promote animal immunity. The present study was performed to investigate the effect of feed supplement Pseudostellaria Heterophylla Polysaccharide (PHP) on serum Immunoglobulins, T lymphocyte subpopulations, Cytokines and Lysozyme (LZM) activity in chicks. In addition, the influence of PHP on splenic gene expression was investigated by transcriptome sequencing. Four hundred 7-day-old Gushi cocks were randomly divided into four groups in a completely randomized design. The chicks were fed with a basal diet supplemented with 0 (CON-A), 100 (PHP-L), 200 (PHP-M) and 400 (PHP-H) mg/kg PHP. Blood and spleen samples were collected from 6 randomly selected chicks in each group at 14, 21, 28, and 35 days of age. The results showed that compared to the CON-A group, the PHP-M group exhibited significant increases in the levels of IgA, IgG, IgM, CD3, and LZM in the serum at 14, 21, 28, and 35 days (P < 0.05), and at 28 d, there was a significant quadratic relationship between the levels of dietary PHP and the levels of IgG, IgM, IFN-γ, IL-2, CD3, and LZM. Furthermore, a total of 470 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in spleen from PHP-M and CON-A at 28 d. These DEGs were significantly enriched in the Phagosome, Intestinal immune network for IgA production and Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction pathways. The present investigation highlights the ameliorating effect of dietary PHP on immunological variables and spleen of chicks, the study suggests that PHP supplementation can enhance immunity and positively impact spleen mRNA expression in chicks., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

For investigating the effects of stress on the immune response of chickens, we established a corticosterone (CORT)-induced stress model by exogenous intake of CORT. Control group was fed with a basal diet and the stress model group was fed with a 30 mg/Kg CORT-treated diet in ad libitum conditions for 7 days. Then, we used RNA-seq technology to identify the expression pattern of miRNAs, target genes, and relevant pathways in chicken spleen. Results showed that 71 differentially expressed miRNAs (DEMs) were determined, 9 of which were significantly differentially expressed miRNAs (SDEMs), and 241 target genes of DEMs were predicted. GO annotation and KEGG pathway analysis were carried out to understand the role of the DEMs. Out of 287 significantly enriched GO terms, 37 were stress- or immune-related, such as response to light stimulus, detection of oxidative stress, and immune response in mucosal-associated lymphoid tissue. Out of 85 KEGG pathways, 8 were related to stress or immunity, such as cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, JAK-STAT signaling pathway, and RLR signaling pathway. We then constructed the interaction networks between target genes from immune-related pathways and their DEMs. The analysis results suggested that some DEMs (gga-miR-17 family, gga-miR-15/16 family, gga-miR-2954 and gga-miR-34b-5p) and target genes (SIKE1, CX3CL1, IL11Ra, PIGR, and CDKN1A) were core miRNAs and genes. This study revealed the dynamic miRNA transcriptome, target genes and related pathways in chicken spleen under CORT-induced stress model, which provided a basis for studying the molecular mechanism of stress affecting immune function., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Stress is a physiological manifestation of the body's defense against adverse effects of external environment, but the molecular regulatory mechanism of stress effects on immune function of poultry has not been fully clarified. In this study, 7-day-old Chinese local breed Gushi cocks were used as model animal, and the stress model was successfully constructed by adding corticosterone (CORT) 30 mg/kg basic diet for 7 days. The spleen transcriptomes of the control group (B&#95;S group) and the stress model group (C&#95;S group) was determined by high-throughput mRNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) technology, and a total of 269 significantly differentially expressed genes (SDEGs) were obtained (Padj < 0.05, |FC| ≥ 2 and FPKM > 1). Compared with B&#95;S group, there were 140 significantly up-regulated genes and 129 significantly down-regulated genes in C&#95;S group. The immune/stress-related Gene Ontology (GO) terms included positive regulation of T cell mediated immunity, chemokine-mediated signaling pathway, T cell mediated immunity and so on. The SDEGs such as IL8L1, HSPA8, HSPA2, RSAD2, CCR8L and DMB1 were involved in these GO terms. Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis showed that the SDEGs participated in many immune-related signaling pathways. The immune-related genes HSPA2, HSPA8, HSP90AA1, HSPH1 and HERPUD1 were enriched in Protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum pathway, IL8L1, CXCL13L2, CCR6, LEPR, CCR9 and CCR8L were enriched in Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction pathway. The protein-protein interactions (PPI) analysis showed HSPA8, HSPA2 and IL8L1 as key core nodes had 7 interactions and may play important roles in the regulation of CORT-induced stress effects on immune function. The data onto this study enriched the genomic study of stress effects on immune function, and provided unique insights into the molecular mechanism of stress effects on immune function, and the genes identified in this study can be candidates for future research on stress response., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Stress-induced immunosuppression is a common problem in the poultry industry, but the specific mechanism of its effect on the immune function of chicken has not been clarified. In this study, 7-day-old Gushi cocks were selected as subjects, and a stress-induced immunosuppression model was successfully established via daily injection of 2.0 mg/kg (body weight) dexamethasone. We characterized the spleen transcriptome in the control (B&#95;S) and model (D&#95;S) groups, and 515 significant differentially expressed genes (SDEGs) (Fragments Per Kilobase of transcript sequence per Millions base pairs sequenced (FPKM) > 1, adjusted p -value (padj) < 0.05 and Fold change (|FC|) ≥ 2) were identified. The cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction signaling pathway was identified as being highly activated during stress-induced immunosuppression, including the following SDEGs- CXCL13L2, CSF3R, CSF2RB, CCR9, CCR10, IL1R1, IL8L1, IL8L2, GHR, KIT, OSMR, TNFRSF13B, TNFSF13B , and TGFBR2L . At the same time, immune-related SDEGs including CCR9 , CCR10, DMB1, TNFRSF13B, TNFRSF13C and TNFSF13B were significantly enriched in the intestinal immune network for the IgA production signaling pathway. The SDEG protein-protein interaction module analysis showed that CXCR5, CCR8L, CCR9, CCR10, IL8L2, IL8L1, TNFSF13B, TNFRSF13B and TNFRSF13C may play an important role in stress-induced immunosuppression. These findings provide a background for further research on stress-induced immunosuppression. Thus, we can better understand the molecular genetic mechanism of chicken stress-induced immunosuppression.

Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) is one of the most important aquacultured species of the family Cyprinidae, and breeding this species for disease resistance is becoming more and more important. However, at the genome or transcriptome levels, study of the immunogenetics of disease resistance in the common carp is lacking. In this study, 60,316,906 and 75,200,328 paired-end clean reads were obtained from two cDNA libraries of the common carp spleen by Illumina paired-end sequencing technology. Totally, 130,293 unique transcript fragments (unigenes) were assembled, with an average length of 1400.57 bp. Approximately 105,612 (81.06%) unigenes could be annotated according to their homology with matches in the Nr, Nt, Swiss-Prot, COG, GO, or KEGG databases, and they were found to represent 46,747 non-redundant genes. Comparative analysis showed that 59.82% of the unigenes have significant similarity to zebrafish Refseq proteins. Gene expression comparison revealed that 10,432 and 6889 annotated unigenes were, respectively, up- and down-regulated with at least twofold changes between two developmental stages of the common carp spleen. Gene ontology and KEGG analysis were performed to classify all unigenes into functional categories for understanding gene functions and regulation pathways. In addition, 46,847 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were detected from 35,618 unigenes, and a large number of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and insertion/deletion (INDEL) sites were identified in the spleen transcriptome of common carp. This study has characterized the spleen transcriptome of the common carp for the first time, providing a valuable resource for a better understanding of the common carp immune system and defense mechanisms. This knowledge will also facilitate future functional studies on common carp immunogenetics that may eventually be applied in breeding programs., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in the regulation of many fundamental biological processes in eukaryotes; however, miRNAs associated with immune functions in the common carp have not been reported. In this study, a small-RNA cDNA library was constructed from the spleen of the common carp. A total of 10,603,456 high-quality clean reads, representing 293,603 unique sequences, were obtained from the small-cDNA library using the Solexa sequencing. By the bioinformatic analysis, 194 conserved miRNAs and 12 novel miRNAs were identified in the carp spleen. The abundant miRNAs principally belong to 30 miRNA gene families such as let-7, mir-10, mir-15, mir-30, and so on. The conservation analysis showed that 23 families were present both in protostomes and deuterostomes, 46 families were conserved only in vertebrates, and 5 families (mir-430, mir-722, mir-724, mir-734, and mir-738) were identified only in fish species. Furthermore, GO enrichment analysis and KEGG pathway analysis suggested that miRNAs expressed in the spleen of common carp are involved in immune system development, lymphoid organ development, lymphocyte activation, immune response, B cell receptor signaling pathway, T cell receptor signaling pathway, Fc gamma R-mediated phagocytosis, Toll-like receptor signaling pathway, and so on. This study described the miRNA transcriptome in spleen tissue for the first time in the common carp. The results expand the number of known common carp miRNAs and provides a meaningful framework to understand the common carp immune system and defense mechanisms., (© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Stress-induced immunosuppression is one of the most widespread problems in the poultry industry. Understanding the molecular regulatory mechanism of immunosuppression induced by stress in the chicken spleen would provide a scientific foundation for the prevention of stress reactions and antistress molecular breeding in poultry. To assess the protein expression profile of spleen tissue in a stress-included immunosuppression model, we performed a TMT-based proteomic analysis of chicken spleen tissue in a Dex-induced immunosuppression model (group C) and a control group (group A). We identified 590 differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) in chicken spleen tissue. These DAPs were significantly enriched in the following functional categories: ECM-receptor interaction, DNA replication, p53 signaling pathway, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and NF-kappa B signaling pathway. Integrative analysis of the proteome and our previous transcriptome data revealed 62 DAPs showing correlations with the expression of their encoding mRNAs. Complementary proteome- and transcriptome-level analyses revealed a complex molecular network of stress-included immunosuppression. DPP4 and ALDH1A3 were the most significantly upregulated DAPs. GBP and OASL were identified as important nodes in the network related to stress-induced immunosuppression. The candidate genes identified in this study may be useful for the marker-based breeding of new chicken varieties with reduced stress levels. This study provides a large amount of new information about the spleen proteome of the Dex-induced immunosuppression in chicks, as well as the correlation of transcriptome and proteome. Analysis of this resource has enabled us to examine mechanism of protein and transcript diversification, which expands the understanding of the complexity of the mechanism of stress-induced immunosuppression. [Display omitted] • Dexamethasone is a stressor that can induce immunosuppression in poultry. • Proteomic analysis revealed the mechanism of dexamethasone-induced immunosuppression. • DPP4 and ALDH1A3 play important roles in stress-induced immunosuppression. • GBP and OASL may be important genetic targets of stress-induced immunosuppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]