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Blood transcriptome analysis revealed the immune changes and immunological adaptation of wildness training giant pandas

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Abstract

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a global flagship species for biodiversity conservation. As the time for captive giant pandas to be released into the wild matures, wildness training is provided to allow adaptation to their natural environment. It is assumed that changes in the immune system would be integral in this adaptation from captive to wild, where many more pathogens would be encountered in their natural habitats. Therefore, this study aims to determine the expression changes of immune-related genes and their potential as immunoassay markers for adaptation monitoring in wildness training giant pandas, and then to understand the adaptation strategy of wildness training giant pandas to the wild environment, thereby improving the success rate of panda reintroduction. We obtained 300 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) by RNA-seq, with 239 up-regulated and 61 down-regulated DEGs in wildness training giant pandas compared to captive pandas. Functional enrichment analysis indicated that up-regulated DEGs were enriched in several immune-related terms and pathways. There were 21 immune-related DEGs, in which most of them were up-regulated in wildness training giant pandas, including several critical innate and cellular immune genes. IL1R2 was the most significantly up-regulated gene and is a signature of homeostasis within the immune system. In the protein–protein interaction (PPI) analysis, CXCL8, CXCL10, and CCL5 were identified as the hub immune genes. Our results suggested that wildness training giant pandas have stronger innate and cellular immunity than captive giant pandas, and we proposed that a gene set of CXCL8, CXCL10, CCL5, CD3D, NFKBIA, TBX21, IL12RB2, and IL1R2 may serve as potential immunoassay markers to monitor and assess the immune status of wildness training giant pandas. Our study offers the first insight into immune alterations of wildness training giant pandas, paving the way for monitoring and evaluating the immune status of giant pandas when reintroducing them into the wild.

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Data accessibility

The data that support the findings of this study have been deposited into CNGB Sequence Archive (CNSA) of China National GeneBank DataBase (CNGBdb) (Chen et al. 2020) with accession number CNP0001623.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge and thank Dr. Megan Price for providing language help.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31570534), and the State Forestry Administration (GH201709).

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Author notes

  1. Miao Yang and Yan Huang equal contribution.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-resources and Eco-environment, Ministry of Education, College of Life Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, People’s Republic of China

    Miao Yang, Jie Sun, Haibo Shen & Xiuyue Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of State Forestry and Grassland Administration on Conservation Biology of Rare Animals in The Giant Panda National Park, China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, Dujiangyan, 623006, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China

    Yan Huang, Honglin Wu, Caiwu Li & Shanshan Ling

  3. Sichuan Key Laboratory of Conservation Biology on Endangered Wildlife, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, People’s Republic of China

    Bisong Yue

  4. Sichuan University, No. 24 South Section 1, Yihuan Road, Chengdu, 610065, Sichuan, China

    Xiuyue Zhang

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  1. Miao Yang
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Contributions

MY and YH coordinated and performed the research. Miao Yang analyzed the data, prepared all figures, and wrote the manuscript. BY and XZ conceived and designed the study. HW, CL, and SL provided the blood samples and contributed new methods. JS and HS provided important help in the revision of the manuscript. All the authors conceived the study and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiuyue Zhang.

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The authors disclose no potential conflicts of interest.

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All sample collection protocols were performed in accordance with the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee guidelines of Sichuan University (Grant No: 20190506001).

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Yang, M., Huang, Y., Wu, H. et al. Blood transcriptome analysis revealed the immune changes and immunological adaptation of wildness training giant pandas. Mol Genet Genomics 297, 227–239 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-021-01841-7

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