RESUMEN
Bovine mastitis is the most common and costly disease of dairy cattle. Cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4) is closely related to the immune response in mastitis. We quantified promoter CpG methylation levels of the CD4 gene in Chinese Holsteins with clinical mastitis (CM) and in healthy controls; these levels were quantitatively detected with bisulfite pyrosequencing assays and confirmed by cloning sequencing. We found that the bovine CD4 promoter had 16% more methyl groups in the cows with CM (75.0 ± 5.8%) compared to the controls (59.0 ± 8.5%). The decreased expression level of CD4 in CM cows may be downregulated by the increased DNA methylation levels in the CD4 promoter. Two-dimensional hierarchical clustering analyses showed large differences in promoter CD4 methylation between mastitic and healthy cows; the dendrogram clearly distinguished the cows with clinical mastitis from healthy controls based on methylation levels. The DNA methylation level of the CD4 gene was strongly influenced by mastitis status in all comparisons. We suggest that the DNA methylation level of the CD4 promoter can be used as a molecular marker for clinical mastitis in dairy cows.
Asunto(s)
Antígenos CD4/genética , Metilación de ADN , Leucocitos Mononucleares/metabolismo , Mastitis Bovina/genética , Regiones Promotoras Genéticas , Animales , Secuencia de Bases , Bovinos , Islas de CpG , Epigénesis Genética , Femenino , Estudios de Asociación Genética , Datos de Secuencia Molecular , Análisis de Secuencia de ADN , Transcripción GenéticaRESUMEN
We used methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism to examine DNA methylation levels and CCGG patterns in parents and offsprings of 3 groups of adult chickens, purebred White Leghorn (AA), White Plymouth Rock (EE), and crossbred individuals (EA) using 10 primer combinations. We found that about 66% of the cytosines at CCGG sites were not methylated. Fully methylated sites were less frequent than hemi-methylated sites in the chicken genome; these frequencies were different from those of plants. We observed that the probability that the offspring would inherit the methylation pattern for any given site from the parents was 88%; consequently, unexpected methylation patterns in offspring occurred at a rate of about 12%. The methylation degree in offspring was lower than in parents, and there were more sites with altered methylation patterns in EA crossbreds compared with AA and EE purebreds. Seven differentially methylated fragments between parental lines and their offspring were isolated, sequenced, and characterized, 4 of which were located in the coding regions. We conclude that most of the methylation status is transferred from parents to offspring in chickens, and that there are differences in the inheritance of methylation status in purebred versus crossbred offspring. We also concluded that methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism is highly efficient for large-scale detection of cytosine methylation in the chicken genome.