Abstract

Microbial RNA is detectable in host samples by aligning unmapped reads from RNA sequencing against taxon reference sequences, generating a score proportional to the microbial load. An RNA-Seq data analysis showed that 83.5% of leukocyte samples from six dairy herds in different EU countries contained bovine herpes virus-6 (BoHV-6). Phenotypic data on milk production, metabolic function, and disease collected during their first 50 days in milk (DIM) were compared between cows with low (1–200 and n = 114) or high (201–1175 and n = 24) BoHV-6 scores. There were no differences in milk production parameters, but high score cows had numerically fewer incidences of clinical mastitis (4.2% vs. 12.2%) and uterine disease (54.5% vs. 62.7%). Their metabolic status was worse, based on measurements of IGF-1 and various metabolites in blood and milk. A comparison of the global leukocyte transcriptome between high and low BoHV-6 score cows at around 14 DIM yielded 485 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The top pathway from Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis was the immune system process. Down-regulated genes in the high BoHV-6 cows included those encoding proteins involved in viral detection (DDX6 and DDX58), interferon response, and E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. This suggested that BoHV-6 may largely evade viral detection and that it does not cause clinical disease in dairy cows.

Highlights

  • Cattle populations are exposed to a wide variety of acute and chronic diseases caused by pathogens derived from many different members of the animal kingdom including viruses, bacteria, protozoa, Platyhelminthes, and nematodes

  • We found that the bovine herpes virus-6 (BoHV-6) scores remained stable between 14 and 35 days in milk (DIM), but no pre-calving samples were taken for comparison

  • Using analysis of leukocyte RNA-Seq data, BoHV-6 was detected in 83.5% of cows in the study

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Summary

Introduction

Cattle populations are exposed to a wide variety of acute and chronic diseases caused by pathogens derived from many different members of the animal kingdom including viruses, bacteria, protozoa, Platyhelminthes, and nematodes. Some of these are zoonotic (e.g., Cryptosporidiosis) [1]. Others (e.g., bovine viral diarrhea) reduce immunity, making cattle more susceptible to other diseases and increasing antibiotic usage [2]. Bovine pathogen diagnostic procedures are based on a variety of methodologies including post mortems, antibiotic susceptibility testing, serological

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