Investigating the important proteins in causing West Nile virus infection in retinal pigment cells

Introduction: West Nile virus is an infection transmitted through blood-sucking arthropods. Ocular manifestations are one of the characteristics of West Nile virus infection. They occur mostly in connection with severe neurological disease. In this study، using bioinformatics analysis، we investigated and identified the genes in the pathways related to West Nile virus infection in the retina. Methods: In this study, using bioinformatics methods and referring to the GEO dataset, the appropriate dataset was selected for analysis. This dataset included gene expression profiles in West Nile virus infection with retinal pigment cells. Gene clusters with high and low expression were categorized. For more accurate data evaluation,  databases such as Enrichr، STRING and Network analyst were used. The candidate genes were isolated and their protein relationship was also measured using cytoescape software version 3.7.1. The obtained values with P-Value˂0.05 were selected as significant data. Results: The number of 830 genes with high expression and 500 genes with low expression was involved in the development pathways of West Nile virus infection in the eye. Apoptosis، necroptosis، AMPK and MAPK autophagy pathways were clearly observed. After evaluating the relationship between protein networks، RIPK1، STAT1/3 and JAK2 increased expression and GSK3B، MAPK8 and TSC2 genes had decreased expression. Conclusion: The present study showed that important proteins and genes played a major role in strengthening West Nile virus inflammation in the retina, among which RIPK1,TSC2, STAT1 and JAK2 showed a more prominent role in this pathway.