Influence of bovine virus diarrhoea virus on the transcriptome profile of bovine endometrium in response to bacterial lipopolysaccharide.. Bos taurus

Infection with non-cytopathic bovine viral diarrhea virus (ncpBVDV) is associated with uterine disease and infertility. This study investigated the influence of ncpBVDV on immune functions of the bovine endometrium by testing the response to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) at the level of whole-transcriptomic gene expression. Analysis showed that approximately 30% of the 1,006 genes altered by LPS are involved in immune response. Many innate immune genes that typically respond to LPS were inhibited by ncpBVDV including those involved in pathogen recognition, inflammation, interferon response, chemokines, tissue remodeling, cell migration and cell death/survival. Infection with ncpBVDV can thus compromise immune function and pregnancy recognition thereby potentially predisposing infected cows to postpartum bacterial endometritis and reduced fertility. Overall design: Primary cultures of mixed epithelial and stromal cells derived from bovine endometrium were divided into 4 treatment groups (CONT; CONT+LPS; ncpBVDV; ncpBVDV+LPS) with n=6 separate batches of cells used for each treatment. After the cells were cultured for 4 days, they were infected with ncpBVDV for 4 days followed by the LPS treatments for 6 h. Total RNA in the cells were extracted using a Qiagen RNeasy Mini kit and analyzed using 24 Affymetrix Bovine Gene 1.1 ST Arrays. Processing, normalization and further analysis of the microarray data were performed using RMA16 built in Genespring GX software version 12.5 (Agilent Technologies) with the annotation files provided by the company which had annotation of over 95% of the probes.