Published In

bioRxiv

Document Type

Pre-Print

Publication Date

12-2022

Subjects

Host-bacteria relationships, Bacterial genetics, Leishmania, Coxiella burnetii, Molecular parasitology

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs, are critical to gene regulation in eukaryotes. They are involved in modulating a variety of physiological processes, including the host response to intracellular infections. Little is known about miRNA functions during infection by Coxiella burnetii, the causative agent of human Q fever. This bacterial pathogen establishes a large replicative vacuole within macrophages by manipulating host processes such as apoptosis and autophagy. We investigated miRNA expression in C. burnetii-infected macrophages and identified several miRNAs that were down- or up-regulated during infection. We further explored the functions of miR-143-3p, an miRNA whose expression is down-regulated in macrophages infected with C. burnetii, and show that increasing the abundance of this miRNA in human cells results in increased apoptosis and reduced autophagy – conditions that are unfavorable to C. burnetii intracellular growth. In sum, this study demonstrates that C. burnetii infection elicits a robust miRNA-based host response, and because miR-143-3p promotes apoptosis and inhibits autophagy, down-regulation of miR-143-3p expression during C. burnetii infection likely benefits the pathogen.

Rights

Copyright : The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

Description

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in bioRxiv. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in and is located here: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.05.11.491587

DOI

10.1101/2022.05.11.491587

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39100

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