UF veterinarians hope new gene chip will help detect, treat West Nile virus in horses and humans
A new “gene chip” developed at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine sheds light on brain response in horses infected with West Nile Virus and could lead to better ways to diagnose and treat both equines and humans, researchers said. Using gene sequencing technology, the researchers developed a “brain and immunity chip” to characterize molecular changes in the equine brain during illness and recovery from West Nile virus. The findings were published in PloS One.
“We hope this will help us understand why some animals and humans become sick and others succumb to the virus resulting in severe illness, lifelong neurological debilitation and even death,” said senior author Maureen Long, D.V.M., Ph.D., an associate professor of infectious diseases and pathology. “Knowing this will allow us to come up with treatments that aid in recovery from illness.”
Lead author and Long’s former graduate student Melissa Bourgeois, D.V.M., Ph.D., created a gene library enriched for neurological and immunological sequences to develop the novel chip, which will help target genes that are active during brain disease states.
In the end, the equine brain chip consisted of 41,040 genes and included many targets that have counterparts in human psychiatric diseases, such as depression and schizophrenia; and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“Although we knew there were microarrays that had previously been developed for horses, our goal was to create a brain and inflammation-based array to look specifically at how function was affected during brain infection,” said Long, who is also a member of the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute. “This chip has applications to many brain and spinal abnormalities of the horse including eastern equine encephalitis, equine protozoal myelitis, rabies, and even non-infectious diseases like Wobbler syndrome. This allowed us to detect changes that would not be common in normal horses.”
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