Most cited article - PubMed ID 33466803
Long Non-Coding RNAs and Their Potential Roles in the Vector-Host-Pathogen Triad
Arthropod disease vectors not only transmit malaria but many other serious diseases, many of which are, to a greater or lesser degree, neglected [...].
Ixodes ricinus ticks are distributed across Europe and are a vector of tick-borne diseases. Although I. ricinus transcriptome studies have focused exclusively on protein coding genes, the last decade witnessed a strong increase in long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) research and characterization. Here, we report for the first time an exhaustive analysis of these non-coding molecules in I. ricinus based on 131 RNA-seq datasets from three different BioProjects. Using this data, we obtained a consensus set of lncRNAs and showed that lncRNA expression is stable among different studies. While the length distribution of lncRNAs from the individual data sets is biased toward short length values, implying the existence of technical artefacts, the consensus lncRNAs show a more homogeneous distribution emphasizing the importance to incorporate data from different sources to generate a solid reference set of lncRNAs. KEGG enrichment analysis of host miRNAs putatively targeting lncRNAs upregulated upon feeding showed that these miRNAs are involved in several relevant functions for the tick-host interaction. The possibility that at least some tick lncRNAs act as host miRNA sponges was further explored by identifying lncRNAs with many target regions for a given host miRNA or sets of host miRNAs that consistently target lncRNAs together. Overall, our findings suggest that lncRNAs that may act as sponges have diverse biological roles related to the tick-host interaction in different tissues.
- Keywords
- Ixodes ricinus, RNA-sequencing, ectoparasite-host interactions, host immunity, lncRNA,
- MeSH
- Ixodes * genetics MeSH
- MicroRNAs * genetics MeSH
- Tick-Borne Diseases * MeSH
- RNA, Long Noncoding * genetics MeSH
- Computational Biology MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Names of Substances
- MicroRNAs * MeSH
- RNA, Long Noncoding * MeSH
