1. Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), Institute for Genome Biology, Wilhelm-Stahl-Allee 2, 18196 Dummerstorf, Germany.
Int J Biol Sci. 2013 Sep 20;9(9):907-16. doi: 10.7150/ijbs.6769. eCollection 2013.
The identification of key genes and regulatory networks in the transcriptomic responses of blood cells to antigen stimulation could facilitate the understanding of host defence and disease resistance. Moreover, genetic relationships between immunocompetence and the expression of other phenotypes, such as those of metabolic interest, are debated but incompletely understood in farm animals. Both positive and negative associations between immune responsiveness and performance traits such as weight gain or lean growth have been reported. We designed an in vivo microarray study of transcriptional changes in porcine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) during the immune response to tetanus toxoid (TT) as a model antigen for combined cellular (Th1) and humoral (Th2) responses. The aim of the study was to investigate the responsiveness of PBMCs against the background of divergent lean growth (LG) performance and anti-TT antibody (AB) titers and to compare lean growth and humoral immune performance phenotypes.
In general, high LG phenotypes had increased cellular immune response transcripts, while low AB phenotypes had increased transcripts for canonical pathways that represented processes of intracellular and second messenger signaling and immune responses. Comparison of lean growth phenotypes in the context of high AB titers revealed higher cellular immune response transcripts in high LG phenotypes. Similar comparisons in the context of low AB titers failed to identify any corresponding pathways. When high and low AB titer phenotypes were differentially compared, low AB phenotypes had higher cellular immune response transcripts on a low LG background and higher cell signaling, growth, and proliferation transcripts on a high LG background.
Divergent phenotypes of both lean growth performance and humoral immune response are affected by significant and functional transcript abundance changes throughout the immune response. The selected high-performance phenotypes demonstrated both high AB titers and increased transcript abundance of cellular immune response genes, which were possibly offset by lower expression of other cellular functions. Further, indications of compensatory effects were observed between cellular and humoral immune responses that became visible only in low-performance phenotypes.
鉴定血细胞对抗原刺激的转录组反应中的关键基因和调控网络，可以促进宿主防御和疾病抗性的理解。此外，在农场动物中，关于免疫能力与其他表型（如代谢相关的表型）表达之间的遗传关系存在争议，但尚未完全理解。免疫反应性与体重增加或瘦肉生长等性能特征之间存在正相关和负相关的报道。我们设计了一项体内研究，以破伤风类毒素（TT）作为细胞（Th1）和体液（Th2）反应的组合模型抗原，研究猪外周血单个核细胞（PBMC）在免疫反应过程中的转录变化。该研究的目的是调查 PBMC 对不同瘦肉生长（LG）性能和抗 TT 抗体（AB）滴度的反应，并比较瘦肉生长和体液免疫性能表型。
一般来说，高 LG 表型具有增加的细胞免疫反应转录本，而低 AB 表型具有增加的代表细胞内和第二信使信号转导和免疫反应过程的经典途径转录本。在高 AB 滴度的背景下比较瘦肉生长表型时，高 LG 表型的细胞免疫反应转录本更高。在低 AB 滴度的背景下进行类似的比较时，未能鉴定出任何相应的途径。当高和低 AB 滴度表型差异比较时，低 AB 表型在低 LG 背景下具有更高的细胞免疫反应转录本，在高 LG 背景下具有更高的细胞信号转导、生长和增殖转录本。
瘦肉生长性能和体液免疫反应的不同表型都受到免疫反应过程中显著和功能转录丰度变化的影响。所选的高性能表型均表现出高 AB 滴度和细胞免疫反应基因转录本丰度增加，这可能被其他细胞功能的表达降低所抵消。此外，在低性能表型中仅可见到细胞和体液免疫反应之间的代偿作用的迹象。
