The SLA-immune long oligonucleotide set: a new tool for functional studies of immunity and disease resistance in pig

International audienceSeveral genome wide generic arrays have been developed in pig but they only partially cover the genome and lack many immune response genes. Our aim was to design and validate a long oligonucleotide set dedicated to the immune response. The set comprises 3773 unique probes and includes all genes and putative transcripts localized in the swine leukocyte antigen (SLA) complex region (826 probes) as well as immune response genes outside SLA (2947 probes). The SLA subset contains targeted sense and anti-sense sequences of 407 transcripts and 6 non-coding RNA genes. The SLA-immune set represents 3104 porcine genes or transcripts among which 95% have one assigned GO term at least. The immune response pathways referred in KEGG are all covered and 38 other pathways are represented. The SLA-immune set was spotted onto glass slides together with the Qiagen- NRSP8 set and a series of control elements. We have analyzed transcriptome variations between unstimulated PBMCs and PBMCs stimulated by either LPS or PMA/ionomycin. We will present our results using this generic chip enriched with probes targeting immune response and will discuss the porcine SLA-immune oligonucleotide set as a promising tool for studying immunity and disease resistance in pig