Description
To investigate specific miRNA expression profiles of Marek's disease virus (MDV)-infected samples, we performed deep sequencing for miRNAs in four small RNA libraries, including MDV-infected tumorous spleen, MD lymphoma from liver, and non-infected spleen and lymphocytes from controls. A total of 7.76x106, 6.36x106, 6.36x106, and 7.60x106 counts were obtained in four libraries, respectively. The sequences were blasted with chicken and MDV genomes and miRBase 16.0 to identify known and novel miRNAs. In total, 187 and 16 known mature miRNAs were identified in the chicken and MDV, respectively. Deep sequencing detected 942 novel chicken miRNA candidates, of which 646 were in tumorous spleen. These results indicate that MDV infection induced new host miRNA candidates and increased diversity of miRNAs. Of 942 miRNA candidates, 276 of 533 were verified by customized microarray, and 17 of them were further confirmed by qPCR. Overall design: Four samples examined: MDV-infected tumorous spleen, MD lymphoma from liver, Non-infected spleen, Non-infected lymphocytes