Comparative transcriptomic analysis of porcine peripheral blood reveals differentially expressed genes from the cytokine–cytokine receptor interaction pathway related to health status

Abstract

While some research has looked into the host genetic response in pigs challenged with specific viruses or bacteria, few studies have explored the expression changes of transcripts in the peripheral blood of sick pigs that may be infected with multiple pathogens on farms. In this study, the architecture of the peripheral blood transcriptome of 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. In total, 246 differentially expressed genes were identified to be specific to the sick animals. 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. Our results suggest a subset of novel marker genes that may be useful candidate genes in the evaluation and prediction of health status in pigs under commercial production conditions.

Weaning differentially affects the maturation of piglet peripheral blood and jejunal Peyer’s patches

“…In databases regarding gene expression in tissues, the PB is scarcely considered, and no evidence was found for PYY . The inspection of databases of trials reporting the porcine PB transcriptome supports the Authors’ observation 31 , 43 . It is difficult to explain that the increased expression obtained at weaning in the PB; this could indicate that PYY originates from the presence of reticulocytes or from young erythrocytes.…”

A Comparative Transcriptome Analysis of Human and Porcine Choroid Plexus Cells in Response to Streptococcus suis Serotype 2 Infection Points to a Role of Hypoxia

“…Approaches to investigate the host response to S. suis in vivo have been performed in several organisms, including pigs (Li et al, 2010;Liu et al, 2011a;Gaur et al, 2014;Ye et al, 2017), but also non-porcine species, such as zebrafish and mice (Wu et al, 2010;Rong et al, 2012). Confirming the results of in vitro challenged host cells, during these studies genes involved in inflammatory and immune defense responses were identified as DEGs (Li et al, 2010;Liu et al, 2011a;Rong et al, 2012;Ye et al, 2017). Tissues and organs investigated during the porcine in vivo studies covered spleen, brain, lung, monocytes, and peritoneal blood, but not specifically the CP.…”

Analysis of Merged Whole Blood Transcriptomic Datasets to Identify Circulating Molecular Biomarkers of Feed Efficiency in Growing Pigs

“…Their dynamics re ects homeostatic regulation [1][2][3], physiological changes [4,5] and variations in immune capacity [6,7]. Circulating molecules also provide valuable insights into complex phenotypes such as obesity and diabetes [8,9], health status [10], sensitivity to heat stress [11] and nutrient e ciency for productive outputs [3,7,12]. Therefore, they hold much promise in the identi cation of biomarkers for the prediction of particular phenotypes [13].…”