Abstract:The alterations of gene expression profile of RAW 264.7 cells before and after infection by Listeria monocytogenes (LM) were explored, and the key functional genes and pathways were screened to lay a foundation for investigating the pathogenic mechanism. The RAW264.7 cells were treated with LM at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 10 for 6 h, and RNA was extracted for transcriptome sequencing. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the infection group compared to the control group with a 1.5 fold change and a P<0.05 were screened and analyzed by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis. Some DEGs were validated by RT-qPCR. The transcriptome results showed that the expression of 1 782 genes in RAW264.7 cells changed significantly before and after infection with LM, including 989 up-regulated and 793 down-regulated genes. GO enrichment analysis mainly involved the immune system process, immune response, and regulation of programmed cell death and so on. KEGG analysis showed that the significantly enriched pathways included cytokine-receptor interaction, tumor necrosis factor, and IL-17 signaling pathway and so on. The RT-PCR verification experimental results showed that the trend of fold change of expression in the randomly selected 11 significantly DESs was consistent with the sequencing results. This study lays a foundation for further in-depth exploration of the pathogenic mechanism of LM.
