Caracterização da expressão gênica em suínos em condição de osteocondrose

Abstract

Osteochondrosis (OC) is seen as the main cause of leg weakness in pigs, leading to economic losses and animal welfare concern. The etiology and pathogenesis of this condition is not fully understood yet, but it has been proposed that any abnormalities in the formation of hypertrophic chondrocytes and disrupted blood supply to the growth cartilage are very important predisposing factors. The aim of this current study was to characterize gene expression of joints from OC and non OC-affected pigs by the Representational Difference Analysis (RDA) technique. Healthy and OC joints from the articular surface to the bone from proximal femur bone from swine were excised. The samples were examined histologically and subjected to subtractive hybridization by RDA technique, resulting in 100 sequencing reads, of which 11 had quality analysis. HBA, HBB, TPP1 and COL1A1 were the founded genes. For further confirmatory data, quantitative real-time (RT-qPCR) analysis was performed to examine the expression of 3 genes. The expression levels of HBB, COL1A1 and TPP1 genes were compared between healthy and OC joints. The mRNA expression of HBB and TPP1 genes were up regulated in the OC joint compared with healthy joint. There was no difference in mRNA expression of COL1A1 gene between healthy and OC joints. In this study the finding genes might play some role in development of OC in pigs. However, our findings should lead to further investigation of their implications.