Transcriptome profiling of mice lungs exposed to low-dose ricin .

The goal of this study is to explore the alterations in gene expression in lungs of mice 48 hours after exposure to low-dose ricin compared to lungs of naive mice, in order to provide a framework for comparative investigation of genes and mechanisms that may contribute to the developing lung disease. Methods: Total RNA was extracted from lungs of naive or ricin intoxicated mice (intranasally exposure to 1.7 µg/kg ricin), using the RNeasy mini kit (Qiagen). RNA-seq libraries were constructed and sequencing of 100bp paired-end was performed on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 system. Sequencing yielded about 21M reads per sample that were mapped to the mouse genome. The expression of the infected sample was compared to mock sample, and RNA ratios were clustered using partitioning clustering. We next carried out GO term enrichment analysis. Results: Principal component analysis revealed distinct transcriptional signatures between naïve and ricin mice. We found 8545 differentially expressed genes in the ricin group, including 4394 upregulated and 4151 downregulated genes. Examining the alterations in gene expression in lung of mice after intranasal exposure to low-dose ricin