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Updated: Aug 2, 2026
A Protocol for Analyzing Hepatitis C Virus Replication
Published on: June 26, 2014
Characterization of highly expressed novel hub genes in hepatitis E virus chronicity in rabbits: a bioinformatics and
Manyu Li1, Yan Wang2, Kejian Li3
1Division I of In Vitro Diagnostics for Infectious Diseases, Institute for In Vitro Diagnostics Control, National Institutes for Food and Drug Control, 2 Tiantanxili Rd, Dongcheng District, 100050, Beijing, China. myli226@163.com.
Background:
Hepatitis E virus (HEV), which is the leading cause of acute viral hepatitis worldwide, usually causes self-limited infections in common individuals. However, it can lead to chronic infection in immunocompromised individuals and its mechanisms remain unclear. Rabbits are the natural host of HEV, and chronic HEV infections have been observed in rabbits. Therefore, we aimed to investigate potential key genes in HEV chronicity process in rabbits. In this study, both bioinformatics and experimental analysis were performed to deepen the understanding of hub genes in HEV chronic infection in rabbits.
Results:
Ninety-four candidate differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and the pathways they enriched were identified to be related with HEV chronicity. A total of 10 hub genes were found by protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction. Rabbits of group P (n = 4) which showed symptoms of chronic HEV infection were selected to be compared with HEV negative rabbits (group N, n = 6). By detecting the identified hub genes in groups P and N by real-time PCR, we found that the expressions of MX1, OAS2 and IFI44 were significantly higher in group P (P < 0.05).
Conclusions:
In this work, we presented that MX1, OAS2 and IFI44 were significantly upregulated in HEV chronic infected rabbits, indicating that they may be involved in the pathogenesis of HEV chronicity.
