Genetic variations in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in piglets used as an animal model for staphylococcal...

We have used piglets as an animal model for studying the toxic effects of staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs). Piglets are easy to handle, easy to carry out vital measurements, inexpensive, and more importantly, express remarkably similar pathological symptoms and responses to SE intoxication as humans at comparable doses. Microarray analyses are used to study the effect of many infections on gene expression profile in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. This high throughput application offers detailed depiction of alteration at the molecular levels. When using high throughput gene expression analysis, there is a high possibility of finding genes that vary normally in the tissues under study. It is necessary to verify genes that are normally differentially expressed between piglets. To evaluate the normal physiological variation in gene expression in vivo in piglets, we used cDNA microarray to measure gene expression levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 10 normal Yorkshire piglets. We used analysis of variance to determine genes that showed statistically significant variations across piglets. Out of 1185 genes, 19 (1.6%) genes revealed statistically significant variance between RNA samples. Some of these varying genes are involved in stress response, immune response, and transcription. This study facilitates the characterization of gene expression base line needed for meaningful interpretation of microarray data.