Project description:Cytotoxic therapy leads to marked changes in intestinal structure, function, immunity and microbiota. Information about chemotherapy-induced intestinal gene expression may provide insights into the mechanisms underlying gut toxicity, and help to identify biomarkers and targets for intervention. We investigated jejunal tissue from piglets subjected to two different, clinically-relevant chemotherapy regimens, 1) busulfan plus cyclophosphamide (BUCY) and 2) doxorubicin (DOX). Gene expression analysis identified 1328 and 594 differentially expressed genes in the BUCY and DOX pigs, compared with their respective controls. Similar changes in expression patterns across BUCY and DOX piglets were found for 137 genes (95 genes repressed and 42 induced). Selected genes of potential biological significance were confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Key innate defense molecules, including surfactant protein-D (SP-D), deleted in malignant brain tumors 1 (DMBT-1) and peptidoglycan recognition protein 2 (PGLYRP2) were among the up-regulated genes for both chemotherapy treatments. Based on the results from the two different treatments, we conclude that chemotherapy induces reduced intestinal adaptive immunity while innate immune functions involved in surveillance, protection and homeostasis of mucosal surfaces are up-regulated. The results may be of value to understand monitor and prevent chemotherapy-induced intestinal mucositis by dietary or medical interventions.
Project description:Weaning is a very critical period for piglets, typically accompanied by lower feed intake, weight loss after weaning and increased mortality. At weaning, piglets are exposed to many stressors, such as loss of mothering, mixing with other litters, end of lactational immunity, and a change in their environment and gut microbiota. After weaning, morphological and histological changes occur in the small intestine of piglets producing a rapid change of feeding regime which is critical for the immature digestive system. Sixteen female piglets were weaned to assess the effect of sorbic acid supplementation on the small intestine tissue transcriptome. At weaning day (T0), 4 piglets were sacrified and tissue samples collected. The remaining 12 piglets were weighted and randomly assigned to different post weaning (T5) diets. Diet A (n=6) contained 5 g/kg of sorbic acid. Diet B (n=6) is the same as Standard diet. Total RNA was isolated from ileum samples to be analyzed using the a CombiMatrix CustomArrayTM 90K platform . Even though diet had no detectable effect during the first 5 days after weaning, outcomes from this study highlighted some of the response mechanisms to the stress of weaning occurring in the piglet gut. A total of 205 differentially expressed genes were used for functional analysis using bioinformatics through BLAST2GO, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis 8.0, and the Dynamic Impact Aproach (DIA). Bioinformatics analysis revealed that Apoptosis, RIG-I-like and NOD-like receptor signaling were altered as a result of weaning. Results suggest that immune and inflammatory responses were activated and likely are a cause of small intestine atrophy as revealed by a decrease in villus height and villus/crypt ratio. Keywords: weaning, gut, gene expression, sorbic acid, microarray analysis
Project description:In this study, we applied the isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ) technique to detect alterations in the proteomic profile of the jejunal mucosa using a porcine model in which piglets were offered the protein-limited (PL) diet. Protein identification and quantification for iTRAQ experiments were performed using ProteinPilot (v4.0.8085) software. The LC-MS/MS data were searched against the UniProtKB (sus scrofa). To minimize the false discovery rate (FDR), a threshold for protein identification was applied, with the confident value > 95% (amount to the confident value “unused ProtScore” > 1.3 in ProteinPilot software), and at least one unique peptide was considered for protein identification. Proteins that were quantified with fold change > 2.0 were considered to be differentially expressed proteins. We identified 5275 proteins, 202 of which were differentially expressed. Furthermore, we adopted function annotation analysis of all identified proteins and function enrichment analysis of all differentially expressed proteins to explore more meaningful proteins and pathways.