Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference

January 11-15, 2003
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Poster: Microarrays
            

DIFFERENTIAL GENE EXPRESSION IN PORCINE PEYER'S PATCH

¹ Department of Veterinary PathoBiology, University of Minnesota, 1971 Commonwealth Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108 USA

² Department of Animal Science, University of Minnesota, 1988 Fitch Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108 USA

The mucosal immune system of the gut is the first line of defense against enteric pathogens. Organized regions of lymphoid tissue known as Peyer’s patches line the absorptive epithelium of the small intestine and sample the antigenic environment of the intestine, mediating tolerogenic responses to nutrients and immune responses to pathogenic substances. To begin to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in porcine oral tolerance and innate responses to enteric pathogens, we constructed a subtracted cDNA library of approximately 6,000 transcripts enriched for sequences expressed in Peyer’s patch. cDNA libraries were made from normal Peyer’s patch tissue and Peyer’s patch tissue stimulated in vitro with mitogens, LPS, Salmonella choleraesuis, and cyclic AMP. The combined libraries were then subtracted with fibroblast mRNA. 5’-end sequencing revealed a unigene set of 2433 unique genes of which 46% have either no BLAST match in Genbank or hit to sequences of unassigned function. Approximately 14% of the sequences correspond to genes with functions in immune response, intracellular signalling, and protein turnover or modification. The unigene set and control sequences will be amplified by PCR and arrayed on glass slides in order to evaluate by competitive hybridization the differential expression of genes in Peyer’s patch and their regulation by immune response modifiers.