Change in the responsiveness of interferon-stimulated genes during early pregnancy in cows with Borna virus-1 infection

Abstract

BackgroundBorna disease virus is a neurotropic pathogen and infects the central nervous system. This virus infected a variety of animal species including cows. The most of cows infected with Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) exhibit subclinical infection without any neurological symptoms throughout their lifetime. We previously reported on the low conception rates in-seropositive cows. Interferon-τ (IFN-τ) plays an important role in stable fertilization, and is produced from the fetal side following embryo growth at 15–40 days of pregnancy. IFN-τ induces the expression of interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) 15 and Mx2 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). To understand the embryo growth and maternal reaction during early pregnancy in cows with BoDV-1 infection, we aimed to assess the gene expression of ISG15 and Mx2 from PBMCs in BoDV-1-seropositive cows.ResultsNone of the cows showed any clinical and neurological symptoms. Among the cows that conceived, the expressions of the ISG15 and Mx2 genes were greater in the BoDV-1-seropositive cows than in the BoDV-1-seronegative cows; the difference was significant between the cows that conceived and those that did not (P < 0.05).ConclusionsThe expression of ISG15 and Mx2 genes during early pregnancy significantly increased in the BoDV-1-seropositive cows and may be important for the maintenance of stable pregnancy in BoDV-1-infected cows. In contrast, the gene expression levels of ISG15 and Mx2 did not significantly increase during early pregnancy in BoDV-1-seronegative cows. Thus, BoDV-1 infection may lead to instability in the maintenance of early pregnancy by interfering with INF-τ production.

Ovarian function and the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy in dairy cows with and without evidence of postpartum uterine disease

“…This interaction was explained by greater ISG15 ratio in diseased pregnant cows compared with healthy pregnant cows but lesser ISG15 ratio in diseased nonpregnant cows compared with healthy nonpregnant cows. Takino et al (2016) reported results similar to ours where Borna virus 1-infected (seropositive) pregnant cows had greater ISG15 expression compared with seronegative pregnant cows (Takino et al, 2016). Takino et al (2016) also observed lower P/AI in the infected cows.…”

“…Takino et al (2016) reported results similar to ours where Borna virus 1-infected (seropositive) pregnant cows had greater ISG15 expression compared with seronegative pregnant cows (Takino et al, 2016). Takino et al (2016) also observed lower P/AI in the infected cows. Their conclusion was that diseased cows may require greater INFT signaling (and hence greater ISG15) for the establishment of pregnancy.…”

Transcriptomic profiling of bovine blood dendritic cells and monocytes following TLR stimulation

“…As pDC of other species have repeatedly been described for their ability to rapidly produce large amounts of type I interferons [6], the cytokines that are essential for innate immune responses against viruses [87], we were surprised to find that bovine pDC only marginally upregulated IFN gene expression upon TLR stimulation. Most of the studies that have investigated bovine IFN responses have either detected mRNA for bovine type I IFN [88,89] or mRNA for ISGs [90,91] by quantitative RT‐PCR with total RNA samples from blood or tissues, or have looked at IFN activity by Mx‐CAT reporter assays [92‐96]. Two studies [92, 96] found type I IFN activity in cells that phenotypically resemble the current phenotypic definition of bovine pDC [14].…”

Non‐cytopathic bovine viral diarrhoea virus 2 induces autophagy to enhance its replication

“…Several signalling pathways (e.g. p38 MAPK and class III phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K/Akt) may induce or inhibit apoptosis (Assefa et al, 2000;Tsuruta et al, 2002), and the activation of these pathways has been previously investigated in BVDV-infected cells (Bendfeldt et al, 2007). Akt is a well-characterized anti-apoptotic signal that promotes survival in many cell types; accordingly, we assessed the phosphorylation of Akt by immunoblotting.…”