RNA-sequencing Study Of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells In Sporadic Meniere's Disease Patients

Background:Meniere's disease(MD),a complex disease of inner ear,is characterized by episodic vertigo,fluctuating hearing loss,ear fullness and tinnitus.With the continuous development of gene technology,the genetic study of Meniere's disease has become a hot spot,but it has not been able to fully reveal its pathogenesis.RNA-sequencing(RNA-seq)technology has made a series of achievements in molecular etiology of many diseases,but in the study of Meniere's disease remains uninvestigated.Objective:Our experiment was designed to detect unknown genes that may play important roles in Meniere disease and to illustrate the related mechanism.Methods:The whole RNA-seq technology was used to analyze the transcriptome of peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 3 MD patients and 3 control individuals.The GO analysis was used to reveal the biological function of the differentially expressed genes.Protein-protein interaction network for the protein product was used to uncover interaction of the differentially expressed genes.Quantitative real-time PCR and Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay were conducted to verify the expression of the differentially expressed genes.Results:Of 366 differentially expressed genes(154 genes were up-regulated and 212 genes were down-regulated).Gene ontology(GO)enrichment analysis illustrated that immune relevant factors played a key role in the pathogenesis of MD.Of 366 DEGs,we focused on analyzing the possible immune related genes,among which,the significantly up-regulated genes(GSTM1,TMEM176B,TMEM176A),and down-regulated genes(SLC4A10 and SLC4A1),especially drew our attention.Considering the results of qRT-PCR and ELISA,it was noteworthy that GSTM1 exhibited the highest fold change between two groups,which were consistent with the deep sequencing results by RNA-seq.Conclusion:GSTM1 might be a possible candidate gene for the diagnostic biomarker of MD and provides the basis for further biological and functional investigations.Immune factors might be involved in the MD pathogenesis.