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Methylome patterns of cattle adaptation to heat stress

ABSTRACT: Heat stress has a detrimental impact on cattle health, welfare and productivity by affecting gene expression, metabolism and immune response, but little is known on the epigenetic mechanisms mediating the effect of temperatureat the cellular and organism level. In this study, we investigated genome-wide DNA methylation in blood samples collected from 5 bulls of the heat stress resilient Nellore breed and 5 bulls of the Angus that are more heat stress susceptible, exposed to the sun and high temperature-high humidity during the summer season of the Brazilian South-East region. The methylomes were analyzed during and after the exposure by Reduced Representation Bisulfite Sequencing, which provided genome-wide single-base resolution methylation profiles. Significant methylation changes between stressful and recovery periods were observed in 822 genes. Among these, 352 were only seen in Angus, 367 were specific to Nellore, and 103 showed significant changes in methylation patterns in both breeds. KEGG and Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analyses showed that responses were breed-specific. Interestingly, in Nellore significant genes and pathways were mainly involved in stress responses and cellular defense and were undermethylated during heat stress. Whereas in Angus the response was less focused. These preliminary results suggest that heat challenge induces changes in methylation patterns in specific loci, which should be further scrutinized to assess their role in heat tolerance.

ORGANISM(S): Bos taurus

PROVIDER: GSE161113 | GEO | 2021/05/07

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Heat stress is a major factor that negatively affects animal welfare and production systems. Livestock should adapt to tropical and subtropical areas and to meet this, composite breeds have been developed. This work aimed to evaluate gene expression profiles in the skin of Brangus cattle under heat stress using a case-control design, and to correlate this with skin histological characteristics. Two groups of bulls were set using rectal temperature as a criterion to define stress conditions: stressed (N=5) and non-stressed (N=5) groups. Skin transcriptomics was performed and correlations between breed composition, phenotypic and skin histological traits were evaluated. Results showed 4,309 differentially expressed genes (P < 0.01), 2,113 downregulated and 2,196 upregulated. Enrichment and ontology analyses revealed 132 GO terms and 67 pathways (P < 0.01), including thermogenesis, glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, mitochondrial activity, antioxidant and immune response, and apoptosis. The identity of the terms and pathways indicated the diversity of mechanisms directed to relieve the animals´ suffering, acting from simple passive mechanisms (conduction, convection and radiation) to more complex active ones (behavioural changes, evaporation, vasodilation and wheezing). Furthermore, significant differences between phenotypic and skin histological traits and correlations between pairs of traits suggested a direction towards heat dissipation processes. In this sense, number of vessels was positively correlated with number of sweat glands (P < 0.001) and both were positively correlated with zebuine genetic content (P < 0.05 and P < 0.01, respectively), gland size was positively correlated with epidermal thickness and negatively with hair length (P < 0.05), and epidermal thickness was negatively correlated with gland-epidermis distance (P < 0.0005). These results support the notion that response to heat stress is physiologically complex, producing significant changes in the expression of genes involved in several biological pathways, while the animal’s ability to face it depends greatly on their skin features.

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Methylome patterns of cattle adaptation to heat stress

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