Transcriptional Analysis of JAK/STAT Signaling Pathway Involved Immune Genes to Necrotic Enteritis Afflicted Chicken Lines

Janus Kinases (JAKs) and Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription proteins (STATs) are central mediators of cytokine and growth factor signaling pathways that are constitutively active in several diseases and play an important role in disease progression. The objective of this study was to investigate the transcriptional expression of JAK/STAT candidate genes, their regulators and interactors in intestinal mucosal of two genetic chicken lines (MD-resistant line 6.3 and susceptible line 7.2) co-infected with Eimeria maxima and Clostridium perfringens using RNA-sequencing. We investigated 116 JAK-STAT signaling pathway related genes that had significantly differential expressed between two genetic chicken lines in intestinal mucosal. Of these genes, the expression of 52 genes were significantly increased and 9 genes were decreased with EM/CP co-infected in chicken line 6.3. In chicken line 7.2 had 37 genes that markedly increased and 4 genes were expression decreased with EM/CP co-infected. DEGs in intestinal mucosal were significantly related to biological process terms, cellular component terms and molecular functions terms, and a KEGG pathway mapping of DEGs indicated that were identified. This report represents for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the transcriptional analysis for almost all the candidate genes, regulators as well as potential interactors of JAK/STAT pathway in two genetic chicken lines.