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Differential Gene Expression and Variant Analysis of Clinical Strains of Cryptococcus neoformans
Author(s) -
SeipeltThiemann Rebecca,
McClelland Erin
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.31.1_supplement.908.25
Subject(s) - cryptococcus neoformans , biology , gene , gene expression , genetics , strain (injury) , phenotype , genetic variation , rna seq , computational biology , transcriptome , anatomy
Cryptococcus neoformans is a fungal opportunistic pathogen that kills more than 500,000 people each year. To investigate the relationships of gene expression, genetic variant, and pathogenesis characteristics, RNA sequencing was performed on seven different clinical isolates and one laboratory strain H99S. TopHat, Cufflinks, and Cuffdiff bioinformatics tools were utilized to analyze the data. As expected, all strains showed differential expression of some genes (≤2 or ≥2 fold) compared to the laboratory strain. About 1700 up regulation differences and about 2300 down regulation differences were found compared to wildtype. When the clinical strains were compared to each other, more than 6200 up regulation differences and 7500 down regulation differences were observed in total. These data are currently being analyzed to determine common patterns of gene expression among the clinical strains, discover common biological pathways using gene ontology and gene enrichment analyses, and investigate relationships between gene expression and clinical patient data. Further, variant analyses will be undertaken to investigate genetic variation in the expressed genes of the clinical strains. Support or Funding Information URECA Grant at MTSU