Analysis of Gene Expression in White Blood Cells of Cattle Orally Challenged with Bovine Amyloidotic Spongiform Encephalopathy

Abstract

Bovine amyloidotic spongiform encephalopathy (BASE) is one of the recently discovered atypical forms of BSE, which is transmissible to primates, and may be the bovine equivalent of sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jacob disease (CJD) in humans. Although it is transmissible, it is unknown whether BASE is acquired through infection or arises spontaneously. In the present study, the gene expression of white blood cells (WBCs) from 5 cattle at 1 yr after oral BASE challenge was compared with negative controls using a custom microarray containing 43,768 unique gene probes. In total, 56 genes were found to be differentially expressed between BASE and control animals with a log fold change of 2 or greater. Of these, 39 were upregulated in BASE animals, while 17 were downregulated. The majority of these genes are related to immune function. In particular, BASE animals appeared to have significantly modified expression of genes linked to T- and B-cell development and activation, and to inflammatory responses. The potential impacts of these gene expression changes are described.

Acknowledgments

We thank Debora Campagna (IZSLER Brescia) for expert technical assistance and Renata Piccinini (University of Milan) for help obtaining suitable negative controls. Massimo Delledonne and Alberto Ferrarini (University of Verona) provided valuable advice on construction and use of the CombiMatrix microarray platform. This work was supported by grant PRC2005013 from the Italian Health Ministry to G.L., and by a Cariplo grant for F.S., S.P., and J.L.W.