Advances in Swine Biomedical Model Genomics

Abstract

This review is a short update on the diversity of swine biomedical models and the importance of genomics in their continued development. The swine has been used as a major mammalian model for human studies because of the similarity in size and physiology, and in organ development and disease progression. The pig model allows for deliberately timed studies, imaging of internal vessels and organs using standard human technologies, and collection of repeated peripheral samples and, at kill, detailed mucosal tissues. The ability to use pigs from the same litter, or cloned or transgenic pigs, facilitates comparative analyses and genetic mapping. The availability of numerous well defined cell lines, representing a broad range of tissues, further facilitates testing of gene expression, drug susceptibility, etc. Thus the pig is an excellent biomedical model for humans. For genomic applications it is an asset that the pig genome has high sequence and chromosome structure homology with humans. With the swine genome sequence now well advanced there are improving genetic and proteomic tools for these comparative analyses. The review will discuss some of the genomic approaches used to probe these models. The review will highlight genomic studies of melanoma and of infectious disease resistance, discussing issues to consider in designing such studies. It will end with a short discussion of the potential for genomic approaches to develop new alternatives for control of the most economically important disease of pigs, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), and the potential for applying knowledge gained with this virus for human viral infectious disease studies.

α-Tocopherol incorporation in mitochondria and microsomes upon supranutritional vitamin E supplementation

“…The pig is generally accepted as a large animal model in human research due to its similarity to human size, physiology, organ development, and disease progression (Lunney 2007) and is especially a good human model in terms of lipid digestion and absorption (Innis 1993), and the obtained dietary effects may therefore be extrapolated to human membranes. Hence, the effectiveness in a-tocopherol accumulation in mitochondria and microsomes by dietary means seems rather ineffective, underlining that the interest in developing mitochondria-targeted antioxidants, which can accumulate 100-to 1,000-fold within the mitochondria, has arisen (Murphy and Smith 2007).…”

Candidate inhibitors of porcine complement

“…Fifth, there are high sequence and chromosome structure homology with humans (168), indicating that the majority of in particular the orthologous genes are conserved between the two species.…”

Sulforaphane causes a major epigenetic repression of myostatin in porcine satellite cells

“…1 Skeletal muscle growth is one of the major economic traits in meat production. Postnatal muscle maintenance and growth rely on the activation of a unique population of quiescent "satellite cells" (referred to as muscle stem cells), which are capable of self-renewal and myogenic differentiation to form hypernucleated myotubes.…”