Gene Expression Profile in Peripheral Blood Nuclear Cells of Small Ruminant Lentivirus-Seropositive and Seronegative Dairy Goats in Their First Lactation

The study investigated differences in gene expression profiles of peripheral blood nuclear cells sampled from healthy and infected with SRLV goats, belonging to two breeds. Due to the nature of the lentiviral infection we hypothesized that the virus could induce genes expression regulation. We put forward the hypothesis that if gene expression differences exist, they should be revealed in studies conducted on custom-made Capra hircus Gene Expression Array. The results revealed that SRLV infection results in regulation of several genes in goat’s peripheral blood nuclear cells. The experiment was performed on 8 transcriptomic goat microarray using a common reference design. The common reference comprised a pool of equal amounts of RNA from 7 healthy goats in 4th lactation from both Polish breeds (PWI n=4 and PFI n=3). Samples were taken after finishing of lactation period. Experimental samples were collected from healthy goats and infected SRLV in the peak of 1st lactation (Healthy-goat n=4, SRLV - goatnn=4) and RNA was isolated from perypheriar nuclear blood cells.