ABSTRACT

This communication aims to discriminate scrub typhus (ST), caused with the infection of Orientia tsutsugamushi, from other acute febrile infections, such as malaria (ML), dengue (DG) and murine typhus (MT) by differential gene expression analysis. The microarray gene expression profiles of GSE16463 dataset, from O.tsutsugamushi infected monocytes, was comparatively analysed along with biological process and functional pathways enrichment in disease pathogenesis, using STRING App of the cytoscape by maximal clique centrality method,GEO2R tools with GEOquery, limma R, and Biobase packages from the Bioconductor project. A unique 31 ST-associated signature genes were obtained in this study and the functional pathways significantly enriched were translocation of ZAP-70 to immunological synapse, combined with phosphorylation of CD3 and TCR zeta chains, involving PTPN22 and CD3G genes. The identified transcriptional signatures specific to ST could help distinguish the disease from other acute febrile illnesses: DG, ML and MT, that might be useful in the investigation of the molecular pathophysiology of ST, and discovering novel drug targets and vaccine development as well. Keywords: Acute febrile infection, scrub typhus, Orientia tsutsugamushi, GSE16463 dataset, differential gene expression, biological process and functional pathways
Publication date: 01/01/2022

https://ijbpas.com/pdf/2022/January/MS_IJBPAS_2022_5801.pdf

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https://doi.org/10.31032/IJBPAS/2022/11.1.5801