A novel cell communication method reveals that grik4 and gabrd may be critical for inducing death in RGNNV-infected grouper.

To investigate the infectious mechanism of RGNNV, we adopted multi-omics methods to study the precise cellular interactions. We combined proteomic, bulk-RNA seq and sc-RNA seq to search for the secret of RGNNVs influence on the nervous system in grouper. Besides, we created a sc-RNA seq workflow for cell communication analysis that can be applied to those non-model organisms with a reference for the first time, which usually been done by comparing homologous genes in humans or mice in the past (Cheng, Chen et al. 2023), but we use stringdb database to predict interactions at the whole proteomic level (Szklarczyk, Kirsch et al. 2023), and we also build a R package of this procedure to help achieving this goal in other non-model organisms. The results shows that grik4 and gabrd might be the direct causes of death in RGNNV-infected groupers. We also present a mechanistic picture of RGNNV attacking the nervous system of grouper and causing nerve necrosis.