Date of Completion

2021

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Biology

Thesis Type

Honors College

First Advisor

Brian Ballif

Second Advisor

Seth Frietze

Abstract

Chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is a poorly understood condition that affects between .007% and 2.8% of the US population. Characterized by fatigue without a clear cause persisting for at least six months, CFS/ME has never had a precise cause identified. Despite this, researchers have often focused on one of several potential disease mechanisms. While early studies focused on actual pathogens, immune abnormalities in patients with CFS/ME have recently suggested that there may be an autoimmune component to the condition. Given recent research suggesting that the expression of endogenous retroviral elements (ERV) may play a role in activating the innate immune system. I conducted a study to determine whether ERVs might be expressed at greater levels in patients with CFS/ME. To do this, I used a bioinformatic approach to identify ERVs in RNA sequencing data derived from patients diagnosed with CFS/ME as well as controls. Data were processed using the ERVmap scripts and analyzed each ERV identified using a two-sample T test. I identified 49 ERVs that showed a significant positive (p <.05) correlation with CFS/ME. Although my results would be stronger with a larger sample size, they generally show evidence of a connection between expression of ERVs and CFS/ME. Future research should focus on whether inhibiting the specific innate immunity pathways decreases the severity of CFS/ME symptoms.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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