Marek’s disease virus (MDV) is an oncogenic herpesvirus that can cause T-cell lymphomas in chicken. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) is strongly associated with various cancers and many other diseases. In chickens, lncRNAs have not been comprehensively identified. Here, we profiled mRNA and lncRNA repertoires in three groups of spleens from MDV-infected and non-infected chickens, including seven tumorous spleens (TS) from MDV-infected chickens, five spleens from the survivors (SS) without lesions after MDV infection, and five spleens from noninfected chickens (NS), to explore the underlying mechanism of host resistance in Marek’s disease (MD).
