Evaluating the effect of TLR4-overexpressing on the Transcriptome Profile in Ovine Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Background: Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) plays an important role in the elimination of Gram-negative bacteria infections and the initiation of an inflammatory response. Using the technology of pronuclear microinjection, genetically modified (GM) sheep with TLR4 overexpression were generated. These GM sheep exhibited a higher inflammatory response to Gram-negative bacteria infection than wild type (WT) sheep. In order to evaluate the gene expression of GM sheep and study the co-expressed and downstream genes for TLR4, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from TLR4-overexpressing (Tg) and wild type (WT) sheep were selected to discover the transcriptomic differences using RNA-Seq.Result: An average of 18754 and 19530 known genes were identified in the Tg and WT libraries, respetively. A total of 338 known genes and 85 novel transcripts were found to be differentially expressed in the two libraries (P-value Conclusions: The RNA-Seq results revealed that the overexpressed TLR4 in our experiment strengthened the ovine innate immune response by increasing the phagocytosis in PBMC.