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Marek’s disease virus may interfere with T cell immunity by TLR3 signals

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Abstract

Marek’s disease virus (MDV) is a highly oncogenic alpha-herpesvirus that causes T cell immune suppression and malignant lymphomas in chickens. Toll-like receptor (TLR) plays a dominant role in antiviral T cell immunity. However, it is unclear whether MDV induced T cell immunity is associated with TLR-mediated immunity. In this study, the expression of 28 host genes that are involved in TLR-mediated immunity and MHC-medicated T cell immunity was evaluated in chicken thymus at 7, 14, 21 and 28 days post-infection (dpi). Our results demonstrated that 24 host immune-related genes were upregulated during MDV infection at 7 dpi; however, the expression of most of these genes decreased at 21 and 28 dpi. Notably, a positive correlation was found between the down-regulation of CD4, CD8 and TLR3 signals but not the MyD88-dependent TLR pathway. The present study expanded our knowledge of host immune responses against MDV infection and our results might provide a clue that MDV may interfere with T cell immune response through TLR3 signals.

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Acknowledgments

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31272560, 31072135), Major Basic Research of Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (Grant No. 12KJA23001), A Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions and the Science and Technology Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province Graduate students (GXZZ12_0916).

Conflict of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Jiangsu Preventive Veterinary Medicine, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225009, People’s Republic of China

    Xuming Hu, Aijian Qin, Kun Qian, Hongxia Shao & Jianqiang Ye

  2. Ministry of Education Key Lab for Avian Preventive Medicine, Yangzhou University, No.12 East Wenhui Road, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, 225009, People’s Republic of China

    Xuming Hu, Wencai Xu, Aijian Qin, Genghua Wu, Kun Qian & Hongxia Shao

  3. Jiangsu Co-innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Important Animal Infectious Diseases and Zoonoses, Yangzhou, 225009, People’s Republic of China

    Aijian Qin, Kun Qian, Hongxia Shao & Jianqiang Ye

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  1. Xuming Hu
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Correspondence to Aijian Qin.

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Hu, X., Xu, W., Qin, A. et al. Marek’s disease virus may interfere with T cell immunity by TLR3 signals. Vet Res Commun 38, 149–156 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11259-014-9598-x

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