OBJECTIVES: To study the immune mechanism of dendritic cells (DCs) against measles virus (MV) by bioinformatics and to find out the potential biomarkers to improve the prevention and treatment of measles.

METHODS: The gene expression profile of GSE980, which consists of 10 DCs samples from human peripheral blood with MV (RNA was isolated at 3, 6, 12, and 24 hours post-infection) and 4 normal DCs control samples, was obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs, P＜0.05, False Discovery Rate＜0.05, Fold change ＞2) between the MV-infected DCs samples and control samples were screened using the Genevestigater software. Gene ontology (GO) and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses were performed using GenClip 2.0 and STRING 10.5 software, protein‑protein interaction (PPI) network established by Cytoscape 3.4.0.

RESULTS: The gene expression profiles of MV-infected DCs were obviously changed at 3, 6, 12, and 24 hours post-infection compared with the control samples. Twenty six common DEGs (0.9%, MV-infected DCs vs normal DCs) were identified at 4 different time points, including 12 upregulated genes and 14 downregulated genes (P=0.001). GO analysis showed that DEGs were significantly enriched in defense response to virus, type I interferon signaling pathway, cellular response to type I interferon, et al. Furthermore, the DEGs mainly involved in DNA replication, Influenza A and Cell cycle signaling pathways. Whereas, ISG15 and CXCL10 were the key genes in the PPI network of the DEGs, which can interact directly with type I interferon signaling pathway and defense response to virus signaling pathway.

CONCLUSIONS: The DEGs increased gradually with the duration of MV infection. Type I interferon signaling pathway and defense response to virus process can be activated by ISG15 and CXCL10 in DCs against MV, and may provide a novel targets for the treatment of MV.