Gene expression profile of sheep following dietary iodide supplementation

In the present study, we studied the effect of dietray iodide (IOD) supplementation on the transcriptome's profile of sheep. The main objective was to evaluate the effect of IOD-supplementation on the overall transcriptome of sheep, the altered pathways, and the biological processes related to it . A previously custom-designed oligo microarray platform (GPL20576) was used to profile the transcriptome of 10 ewes at two time points [T0 (before supplementation) and T40 (after 40-days supplementation period). The Isolated and purified total RNAs were individually hybridized to the custom (4x44k) DNA microarray. The comparison of unsupplemented and supplemented animals' transcriptome revealed a large set of differentially expressed genes. Functional analysis showed several pathways and biological processes that have been altered following IOD-supplementation to the diet. Fifteen sheep were used in this study. Animals were randomly divided into two groups, where the first group was used as a control (CTRL; n = 5), and the second group (n = 10) was supplemented for 40 days with 28 mg iodide (IOD) per animal/day and served as a experimental group. Following completion of the treatment, blood samples were collected from each individual animal directly into Paxgene blood collection tubes, processed and stored at -20˚C till further analyses. All samples yielded high quality RNA that was tested prior the microarray setup.