Pre-weaning heat stress alters liver transcriptome and DNA methylation in dairy calves | Laporta et al., JDS

This study investigated the impact of pre-weaning heat stress on dairy calves’ hepatic gene expression and DNA methylation. Holstein dairy calves were exposed to summer heat stress (daily average THI > 78) for 42 d postnatally (i.e., birth to weaning) with access to active fan heat abatement (postnatal cooling, post-CL; calf-height airspeed 2.05 m/s, n = 12) or not (postnatal heat stress, post-HS; calf-height airspeed 0.15 m/s, n = 12).
Liver tissue was harvested via biopsy (n = 6 per treatment) at 42 d of age for RNA sequencing and reduced representation bisulfite sequencing. The data sets in this repository contain the raw data for these analyses, including a list of differentially expressed genes and associated pathways and a list of differentially methylated genes and their related pathways and upstream regulators.