Understanding the mechanisms of vaccine-elicited protection contributes to the development of new vaccines. The emerging field
of Systems Vaccinology provides detailed information on host
responses to vaccination and has been successfully applied to
study the molecular mechanisms of several vaccines. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are crucially involved in multiple biological processes but their role in vaccine-induced immunity has not
been explored. We performed an analysis of over 2,000 blood
transcriptome samples from 17 vaccine cohorts to identify lncRNAs potentially involved with antibody responses to Influenza
and Yellow Fever vaccines. We have created an online database
where all results from this analysis can be accessed easily. We
found that lncRNAs participate in distinct immunological pathways
related to vaccine-elicited responses. Among them, we showed
that the expression of lncRNA FAM30A was high in B-cells and
correlates with the expression of Immunoglobulin genes located in
its genomic vicinity. We also identified altered expression of these
lncRNAs in RNA-seq data from a new cohort of children following
immunization with intranasal live attenuated influenza vaccine,
suggesting a common role across several diverse vaccines. Taken
together, these findings provide the first evidence that lncRNAs
play a significant impact on the immune responses induced by
vaccination.