Transcriptomic analysis of porcine peripheral blood reveals differentially expressed genes from the cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction pathway related to health status
Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing
Summary
RNA-Seq has been an effective method for exploring pathology-associated transcriptional changes in peripheral blood. The main goal of this study is to explore the expression changes of transcripts in the peripheral blood of sick pigs which may be infected with multiple pathogens on farms. We aim to find a subset of marker genes which may be useful candidate genes in the evaluation and prediction of health status in pigs under commercial production conditions.
Overall design
Peripheral blood transcriptome architecture in 64 Duroc sired commercial pigs, including 18 healthy animals at entry to a growing facility (set as a control) and 23 pairs of samples from healthy and sick pen mates, was generated using RNA-Seq technology. Differentially expressed genes specific to the sick animals were identified. Functional enrichment analysis for those genes revealed that the over-represented gene ontology terms for the biological processes category were exclusively immune activity related. The cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction pathway was significantly enriched. Nine functional genes from this pathway encoding members (as well as their receptors) of the interleukins, chemokines, tumor necrosis factors, colony stimulating factors, activins and interferons exhibited significant transcriptional alteration in sick animals. We suggested that these cytokines genes are directly involved in peripheral regulation of immune responses in the pig. They might be valuable diagnostic markers for the differential diagnosis of infection in pig.
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