Platelet Transcriptome Profiling in HIV and ABCC4 as a Biomarker of Platelet Activity

The purpose of this study was to perform an unbiased RNA expression profile in platelets from HIV subjects under ART and healthy controls to identify a gene signature for the HIV hyperactive phenotype. Methods: Rna-Sequencing was performed in leukocyte-depleted platelet RNA from 6 HIV subjects and 3 healthy controls. qRT–PCR validation was performed to validate our candidate transcripts. Results: Across the 9 platelet samples, there was an average of 28.3 million mapped reads per sample with an average unique mapping rate of 91.6 %. Using a cut-off of normalized counts =1 across the 9 samples, we found 11988 expressed transcripts. Conclusions: Our study represents a detailed analysis of platelet transcriptome generated by RNA-seq technology in HIV patients under ART. Further experiments identified the mechanism of our transcript target in mediating platelet activity and platelet cell effector function. Overall design: Platelet mRNA profiling in HIV subjects under ART vs helthy controls to identify candidate transcripts with differential expression.