Project description:Boar taint is an offensive odour and/or taste from a proportion of non-castrated male pigs caused by skatole and androstenone accumulation during sexual maturity. Castration is widely used to avoid boar taint but is currently under debate because of animal welfare concerns. This study aimed to identify expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) with potential effects on boar taint compounds to improve breeding possibilities for reduced boar taint. Danish Landrace male boars with low, medium and high genetic merit for skatole and human nose score (HNS) were slaughtered at ~100 kg. Gene expression profiles were obtained by RNA-Seq, and genotype data were obtained by an Illumina 60K Porcine SNP chip. Following quality control and filtering, 10,545 and 12,731 genes from liver and testis were included in the eQTL analysis, together with 20,827 SNP variants. A total of 205 and 109 single-tissue eQTLs associated with 102 and 58 unique genes were identified in liver and testis, respectively. By employing a multivariate Bayesian hierarchical model, 26 eQTLs were identified as significant multi-tissue eQTLs. The highest densities of eQTLs were found on pig chromosomes SSC12, SSC1, SSC13, SSC9 and SSC14. Functional characterisation of eQTLs revealed functions within regulation of androgen and the intracellular steroid hormone receptor signalling pathway and of xenobiotic metabolism by cytochrome P450 system and cellular response to oestradiol. A QTL enrichment test revealed 89 QTL traits curated by the Animal Genome PigQTL database to be significantly overlapped by the genomic coordinates of cis-acting eQTLs. Finally, a subset of 35 cis-acting eQTLs overlapped with known boar taint QTL traits. These eQTLs could be useful in the development of a DNA test for boar taint but careful monitoring of other overlapping QTL traits should be performed to avoid any negative consequences of selection.
Project description:Brucella suis infects macrophages and dendritic cells. Wild boars act as reservoirs and carriers of Brucella suis biovar 2, and there is evidence that wild boar can be the main source of infection for domestic pigs through the venereal route. Transmission through this route could be an important path for disesease dissemination. The result from this study will contribute to the overall understanding of the molecular pathogenic mechanisms involved during Brucella suis infection in European wild boar. Experiment Overall Design: In this study we preliminarily characterized differential gene expression in European wild boar naturally infected with Brucella suis biovar 2 using Microarray hybridization and Real Time RT-PCR analysis. Since Brucella suis acts by infecting macrophages, we used spleen cells to analyze the gene expression response to Brucella suis infection.
Project description:Brucella suis infects macrophages and dendritic cells. Wild boars act as reservoirs and carriers of Brucella suis biovar 2, and there is evidence that wild boar can be the main source of infection for domestic pigs through the venereal route. Transmission through this route could be an important path for disesease dissemination. The result from this study will contribute to the overall understanding of the molecular pathogenic mechanisms involved during Brucella suis infection in European wild boar.
Project description:Boar taint (BT) is an offensive flavor observed in non-castrated male pigs that reduces the carcass price. Surgical castration effectively avoids the taint but is associated with animal welfare concerns. The functional annotation of farm animal genomes (FAANG) for understanding the biology of complex traits and diseases can be used in the selection of breeding animals to achieve favorable phenotypic outcomes. The characterization of pig epigenomes/methylation changes between animals with high and low BT and genome-wide epigenetic markers that can predict BT are lacking. Reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS) of DNA methylation patterns based on next generation sequencing (NGS) is an efficient technology to identify candidate epigenetic biomarkers associated with BT. Three different BT levels were analyzed using RRBS data to calculate the methylation levels of cytosine. The co-analysis of differentially methylated cytosines (DMCs) identified by this study and differentially expressed (DE) genes identified by previous study found 32 significant co-located genes. The joint analysis of GO terms and pathways revealed that methylation and gene expression of seven candidate genes were associated with BT; in particular, FASN plays a key role in fatty acid biosynthesis, and PEMT might be involved in estrogen regulation and the development of BT. This study is the first to report the genome-wide DNA methylation profiles of BT in pigs using NGS and summarize candidate genes associated with epigenetic markers of BT, which could contribute to the understanding of functional biology of BT traits and selective breeding of pigs against BT based on epigenetic biomarkers.
Project description:Boar taint (BT) is an offensive odour or taste observed in pork from a proportion of non-castrated male pigs. Surgical castration is effective in avoiding BT, but animal welfare issues have created an incentive for alternatives such as genomic selection. In order to find candidate biomarkers, gene expression profiles were analysed from tissues of non-castrated pigs grouped by their genetic merit of BT. Differential expression analysis revealed substantial changes with log-transformed fold changes of liver and testis from −3.39 to 2.96 and −7.51 to 3.53, respectively. Co-expression network analysis revealed one module with a correlation of −0.27 in liver and three modules with correlations of 0.31, −0.44 and −0.49 in testis. Differential expression and co-expression analysis revealed candidate biomarkers with varying biological functions: phase I (COQ3, COX6C, CYP2J2, CYP2B6, ACOX2) and phase II metabolism (GSTO1, GSR, FMO3) of skatole and androstenone in liver to steroidgenesis (HSD17B7, HSD17B8, CYP27A1), regulation of steroidgenesis (STARD10, CYB5R3) and GnRH signalling (MAPK3, MAP2K2, MAP3K2) in testis. Overrepresented pathways included “Ribosome”, “Protein export” and “Oxidative phosphorylation” in liver and “Steroid hormone biosynthesis” and “Gap junction” in testis. Future work should evaluate the biomarkers in large populations to ensure their usefulness in genomic selection programs.
Project description:The hypothesis was tested that insect meal (IM) as protein source influences intermediary metabolism of growing pigs. To test this, 5-week-old crossbreed pigs were randomly assigned to 3 groups of 10 pigs each with similar body weights (BW) and fed isonitrogenous diets either without (CON) or with 5 % IM (IM5) or 10 % IM (IM10) from Tenebrio molitor L. for 4 weeks and liver was analyzed using transcriptomics. Transcriptomics of the liver revealed a total of 166 transcripts differentially expressed between IM10 and CON.
Project description:The hypothesis was tested that insect meal (IM) as protein source influences intermediary metabolism of growing pigs. To test this, 5-week-old crossbreed pigs were randomly assigned to 3 groups of 10 pigs each with similar body weights (BW) and fed isonitrogenous diets either without (CON) or with 5 % IM (IM5) or 10 % IM (IM10) from Tenebrio molitor L. for 4 weeks and skeletal muscle was analyzed using transcriptomics. Transcriptomics of skeletal muscle revealed a total of 198 transcripts differentially expressed between IM10 and CON.
Project description:This clinical trial studies the effectiveness of a web-based cancer education tool called Helping Oncology Patients Explore Genomics (HOPE-Genomics) in improving patient knowledge of personal genomic testing results and cancer and genomics in general. HOPE-Genomics is a web-based education tool that teaches cancer/leukemia patients, and patients who may be at high-risk for developing cancer, about genomic testing and provide patients with information about their own genomic test results. The HOPE-Genomics tool may improve patient’s genomic knowledge and quality of patient-centered care. In addition, it may also improve education and care quality for future patients.