Differential expression of proteins in the central nervous system of early and late stage rabies infected dogs

Abstract

Rabies is a zoonotic disease. Dogs are an important reservoir host of rabies in Thailand, Asia, Africa and Europe. The clinical manifestations are the same in humans and dogs, and are categorized into 2 forms; furious and paralytic. Although there have been many rabies studies over the years, the pathogenesis of rabies is still unclear. In this study, proteomic analysis was used to investigate changes in host responses in central nervous system (CNS) tissues at early and late stages of disease compared to non-infected dog controls. They were divided in 5 groups; early furious (FE), late furious (FL), early paralytic (DE), late paralytic (DL) and control (N), respectively. Hippocampus, parietal lobes, brainstem and spinal cord tissues from these 5 groups were collected and stored until examination. Proteins were extracted from these tissues and analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) in combination with liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The proteins were statistically selected by suitable bioinformatics tools. There were 26, 7, 35 and 18 proteins expressed only in each hippocampus, parietal lobes, brainstem and spinal cord, respectively. They played role in cytoskeleton proteins, enzymes, proteins associated with cell death, inflammation and immunity. This is the first report of changes in proteome data set from rabies-infected CNS tissues in both forms, and in early and late stages of infection. This data will be useful for not only better understanding of the molecular mechanism in many regions of CNS tissues, but also diagnostic and therapeutic of rabies.