Abstract
Infection of cattle with bovine herpesvirus type 1 (BHV-1) can lead to upper respiratory tract disease, conjunctivitis, or genital disease and cause serious economic losses to the cattle industry worldwide. The role of long noncoding RNAs in BHV-1 infection is not well understood. To explore the role of lncRNA-MSTRG.16919.1 in bovine herpes virus type I (BHV-1) infected MDBK cells, the lncRNA-MSTRG.16919.1 gene was silenced and sequenced transcriptome and sequencing data were analyzed by Edge R software, Gene Ontology (GO), the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and an interaction network of proteins. Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and Western blotting were used to verify the results of bioinformatic analyses. The results showed that 1151 differential genes were obtained in the siRNA-MSTRG.16919.1 group compared with an NC group. Compared with BHV-33 h, 6586 differentially expressed genes were obtained. A total of 498 differentially expressed genes were screened from the two groups. To verify the accuracy of the sequencing, six genes were randomly selected for RT-qPCR, and the results showed that the expression trend of selected genes was consistent with the sequencing results. GO enrichment analysis showed that the differential genes were related to such biological processes as nucleotide binding, enzyme binding, cell cycle, and glial macromolecule metabolism. KEGG analysis enriched 378 and 2634 signaling pathways, respectively, that were associated with virus infection, ubiquitin-mediated protein hydrolysis, phosphoinositol metabolism, apoptosis, and other metabolic pathways. The STRING protein interaction database was used to analyze the interaction network of proteins encoded by differential genes, and the degree algorithm in Cytoscape was used to screen the top 20 proteins. The results showed that SKIV2L2, JAK2, PIK3CB, and MAPK8 were related to virus infection. Western blot analysis of TNF, NF-κB, MAPK8, MAPK9, and MAPK10 proteins showed that lncRNA-MSTRG.16919.1 was involved in regulating the expression of these functional proteins. The results of this study provide basic information for exploring the function and regulatory mechanism of lncRNA-MSTRG.16919.1 in organisms and help for further studying the interaction between virus and host.