Comparative Expression Profiling of E. coli and S. aureus inoculated primary Mammary Gland Cells sampled from Cows with different genetic Predisposition for Somatic Cell Score. Bos taurus

Establishment of an in vitro system to explore molecular mechanisms of mastitis susceptibility in cattle by comparative expression profiling of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus inoculated primary cells sampled from cows with different genetic predisposition for somatic cell score Primary bovine mammary gland epithelial cells (pbMEC) were sampled from the udder parenchyma of cows that were selected for high and low mastitis susceptibility by applying a marker assisted selection strategy considering QTL and molecular marker information of a repetitively confirmed QTL for SCS in the telomeric region on BTA18 The cells were cultivated and subsequently inoculated with heat inactivated mastitis pathogens Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, respectively. After 1, 6 and 24 hours the cells were harvested and comparatively analyzed using microarray expression chip technology to identify differences in mRNA expression profiles attributed to cultivation, inoculation or to genetic predisposition. Overall design: Six heifers inheriting the favorable paternal QTL allele and five heifers inheriting the unfavorable QTL allele were selected by applying a marker assisted selection strategy. All heifers were kept under the same environmental conditions, had no clinical mastitis and did not show any indication of bacterial infection at slaughter. Primary bovine mammary gland epithelial cell cultures were established from cells sampled from the udder parenchyma of each cow. The cells were challenged with heat inactivated Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus or with PBS for control. After 1, 6 and 24 hours the cells were harvested and mRNA expression was comparatively analyzed between time points for each treatment and each paternally inherited SCS-BTA18-QTL allele, respectively. In addition, the differences in gene expression at time points 1, 6 and 24h between inoculated and respective uninoculated control cells were investigated using the short time series expression miner STEM for co-expression profiling and GO cattegory enrichment analyses.