Identification of DEGs in B cells of patients with common variable immunodeficiency and healthy donors Master Degree Project in Systems Biology Molecular Biotechnology Two years Master 120 ECTS Spring semester 2019 Version 1 Shirin Pour Akaber Email:
[email protected] Supervisor: Ola Grimsholm (University of Gothenburg) Email:
[email protected] Co-supervisor: Andreas Tilevik (University of Skövde) Emails:
[email protected] Examiner: Björn Olsson Email:
[email protected] University of Skövde, department of Bioscience 541 28 Skövde Abstract Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is a rare primary immune deficiency (1:25000) in which patients have a reduction in antibody production and very low titres in one or more of their Ig isotypes, (IgG, IgA and sometimes IgM). This disease can cause different symptoms such as: bronchiectasis, chronic lung disease and even autoimmunity, polyclonal lymphocytic infiltration, lymphoma and death. The underlying causes of CVID are still largely unknown but studies show that different factors like primary B-cell dysfunctions, defects in T cells and antigen-presenting cells are involved. Quantitative analysis of gene expression is of high importance in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying this diseases´ genome regulation. Next-generation RNA-seq has enabled researchers to analyse both coding and non-coding regions of RNA, and therefore has made it possible to identify differentially expressed genes in large-scale data, especially in polygenic diseases like CVID. The aim for this study was to identify the differentially expressed genes between CVID patients and healthy donors to identify important genes and molecular mechanisms underlying this diseases´ genome regulation. For this matter, whole genome RNA-seq analysis was performed on RNA isolated from sorted peripheral blood naïve and CD27bright memory B cells from healthy donors (n=7) and CVID patients (n=5).