Transcriptome analysis of cattle PBMCs induced with E. coli antigen causing mastitis

Abstract

Endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is the most powerful and effective immunostimulant and key virulence factor produced by Escherichia coli (E. coli) accountable for many of the inflammatory changes observed during bovine mastitis. In this study, whole-transcriptomic gene changes in bovine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) stimulated with LPS were compared to the control group and analyzed by RNA sequencing. A total of 358 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in the LPS-induced group as upregulated against the control group, with an adjusted Padj < 0.05 by edge R. The downstream regulation of the immune system process revealed DEGs were involved in the immune response, cell activation, cytokine-mediated signaling pathway, natural killer cell-mediated immunity, etc. These results offer evidence that LPS antigen activates the early inflammatory response and LPS stimulation significantly alters the expression of genes related to inflammation, immunological control, and antigen processing and presentation in PBMCs.