ABSTRACT: Avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) is considered one of the most common infectious bacterial diseases resulting in significant economic losses in poultry industry worldwide. In order to investigate the association between host immune resistance and miRNA expression in the pathogenic process induced by APEC, miRNA expression profiles in broilers spleen were performed by Solexa deep sequencing from three different treatment groups including non-challenged (NC), challenged-mild pathology (MD), and challenged-severe pathology (SV).In total, 3 462 706, 3 586 689, and 3 591 027 clean reads were obtained for NC, MD, and SV, respectively. After comparing the miRNA expression patterns, 27 differentially expressed miRNAs were identified among the three response groups, which included 13 miRNAs between NC and MD, 17 between NC and SV, and 14 between MD and SV. For these miRNAs, different expression in MD and SV suggested they may have resistance activity in APEC infection. Through integrated analysis of miRNA and mRNA expression patterns, 43 negative pairs between miRNA and mRNA (r < -0.80) were obtained. 4 miRNAs were validated to be significant negatively correlated to targets by quantitative real time PCR: gga-miR-21 (CLEC3B and GGTLA1), gga-miR-429 (TMEFF2, CDC20, SHISA2 and NOX4), gga-miR-146b (LAT2 and WNK1), and gga-miR-215 (C7 and ASL2). Additionally, the expression of gga-miR-21 and gga-miR-146b was significantly up-regulated by LPS induced in HD11 macrophage cell. In contrast, gga-miR-429 has no significant change. In summary, we present the first report that characterized the miRNA profiles of chicken spleen in response to APEC infection, and identified several candidate miRNAs which might accelerate host immune response through down-regulating their specific target genes.
