Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis of Porcine Peripheral Blood Reveals Differentially Expressed Genes from the Cytokine-cytokine Receptor Interaction Pathway Related to Health Status

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 which may be infected with multiple pathogens on farms. In this study, 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. 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 which may be useful candidate genes in the evaluation and prediction of health status in pigs under commercial production conditions.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author