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. Platelet mRNA profiling in HIV subjects under ART vs helthy controls to identify candidate transcripts with differential expression.