Transcriptomics comparisons of Mac-T cells versus mammary tissue during late pregnancy and peak lactation

The bovine mammary epithelial cell line Mac-T has been used to study mammary gland in vitro. The reliability of this system to study mammary gland has not been tested using genomics approaches. In the present experimetn a direct transcriptomics comparison between Mac-T cells and mammary tissue at -30 and at 60 day in milk (DIM) is performed. Data indicated that Mac-T cells and mammary tissue had a substantially different transcriptome with a larger difference between Mac-T cells and lactating mammary tissue (i.e., 60 DIM) compared to non-lactating mammary tissue (i.e., -30 DIM). In addition, data indicated that the Mac-T cells substantially differ with mammary tissue in lactation-specific functions. cDNA from Mac-T cells induced in vitro into lactation for 36h (addition of prolactin) was directly hybridize in the microarray chip with cDNA from mammary tissue at -30 or 60 day in milk from 3 cows.