Abstract
Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is a δ-retrovirus responsible for Enzootic Bovine Leukosis (EBL), a lymphoproliferative disease that affects cattle. The virus causes immune system deregulation, favoring the development of secondary infections. In that context, mastitis incidence is believed to be increased in BLV infected cattle. The aim of this study was to analyze the transcriptome profile of a BLV infected mammary epithelial cell line (MAC-T). Our results show that BLV infected MAC-T cells have an altered expression of IFN I signal pathway and genes involved in defense response to virus, as well as a collagen catabolic process and some protooncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Our results provide evidence to better understand the effect of BLV on bovine mammary epithelial cell's immune response.
Highlights
The mammary epithelium plays a critical role in the early defense against pathogens that causes mastitis
Our results show that Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection of the bovine mammary epithelial cell line MAC-T causes increased expression of genes related to the immune response, in addition to altered expression of genes associated with collagen catabolic process, protooncogenes and tumor suppressor genes
The hierarchical clustering analysis done by the platform IDEP revealed that MAC-T samples segregate differently than MAC-T BLV, suggesting that BLV infection affects the bovine mammary epithelial cells transcriptome (Fig 1)
Summary
The mammary epithelium plays a critical role in the early defense against pathogens that causes mastitis. Besides being a physical barrier to pathogens, bovine mammary epithelial cells (bMEC) express pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), whose activation stimulates cytokine production and immune cell recruitment. Any disturbance in this biological system could impair the normal response of this epithelium to pathogen invasion. A bovine mammary epithelial cell line was stably infected with BLV in vitro (MAC-T BLV) [5], showing tha
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