Gene expression profiling of Hereford Shorthorn cattle following challenge with Boophilus microplus tick larvae

Abstract

The ability of cattle to resist tick infestations is partly genetically determined. In order to better define the nature of Bos taurus resistance to the cattle tick Boophilus microplus, skin gene expression was studied using a cattle skin derived cDNA microarray. Expression profiles were determined in skin biopsies sampled from three highly tick resistant animals (HR) and two animals with lower tick resistance (LR) at time 0, immediately before challenge, and again 24 h after challenge. The analysis of the resulting expression data addressed two biological questions: first, for any animal exposed to ticks, which genes are differentially expressed in the 24 h following challenge; and second, which genes are differentially expressed between animals of high and low resistance at 24 h after challenge? In total, 214 genes were found to be differentially expressed in response to larval challenge across all the animals. Seventy-two genes were upregulated and 76 were downregulated at 24 h after challenge. Genes with significantly altered gene expression levels following tick infestation were predominantly keratin genes or mitochondrial genes, as well as odorant binding protein (OBP) and Bos taurus major allergen BDA20. In addition, we identified 66 genes with differential expression between HR and LR animals at 24 h. Of these, genes representing the extracellular matrix and immunoglobulin gene expression pathways were overrepresented. Three differentially expressed genes, OBP, Bos taurus major allergen BDA20 and dendritic cell protein HFL-B5 were further analysed by quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR). The qRT-PCR assay results closely mirrored the expression profiles found in the microarray experiment.

A genome-wide association study of tick burden and milk composition in cattle

“…MAN2A1 mutations are involved in systemic autoimmune disease (Chui et al 2001), and the expression of ABCA9 was affected by cholesterol levels in blood and it belongs to a family of genes that are induced during monocyte differentiation into macrophages (Piehler et al 2002). None of the genes listed in Table 8 was identified by gene expression profiling in cattle following artificial challenge using B. microplus larvae (Wang et al 2007).…”

Expression of immune response genes in peripheral blood of cattle infested with Rhipicephalus microplus

“…Wang et al (2007) evaluated B. taurus animals and observed decreased CXCL8 expression in the skin of susceptible animals after infestation. Hajnická et al (2001) demonstrated anti-CXCL8 action in the salivary gland extract (SGE) of several tick species.…”

“…Most of these studies were performed using skin biopsies from the infestation site (Wang et al, 2007;Kongsuwan et al, 2008;Bagnall et al, 2009;Nascimento et al, 2010;Piper et al, 2008Piper et al, , 2010, and thus far, only one study has evaluated the peripheral blood gene expression in bovine (Piper et al, 2009). The lack of available samples before the artificial infestation, however, has limited understanding of the response process to the tick.…”

Expressed sequenced tags profiling of resistant and susceptible Gyr x Holstein cattle infested with the tick Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus

“…An increasing number of studies have reported that numerous ribosomal proteins show extra-ribosomal functions, such as involvement with several human genetic disorders (Wool, 1996). Studies in gene expression profiling on cattle skin have found an enormous number of ribosomal proteins up regulated in response to a challenge with ticks in both high and low resistance animals (Wang et al, 2007). Furthermore, it is known that global changes in the expression of ribosomal proteins can occur as a response to stress (Causton et al, 2001).…”