Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis Infected Cows Reveal Divergent Immune Response in Bovine Peripheral Blood Derived Lymphocyte Proteome

• Published in: Metabolites 2022-09, Vol.12 (10), p.924
• Main Authors: Korbonits, Lucia, Kleinwort, Kristina, Amann, Barbara, Didier, Andrea, Märtlbauer, Erwin, Hauck, Stefanie, Deeg, Cornelia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; bovine; Cattle; Dairy farms; Defensive behavior; Diagnostic tests; Feces; Flow cytometry; Gastrointestinal tract; host-pathogen response; Immune response; immune system; Infections; Leukocytes (mononuclear); Livestock; Lymphocytes; Major histocompatibility complex; Milk; mycobacteria; Mycobacterium avium; Paratuberculosis; Peripheral blood mononuclear cells; Proteomes; Proteomics; quantitative label-free liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry; Signal transduction; TLR2 protein; Toll-like receptors
• ISSN: 2218-1989; 2218-1989
• DOI: 10.3390/metabo12100924

Bovine paratuberculosis is a serious chronic disease of the gastrointestinal tract that causes economic losses and dramatically affects animal health in livestock. The underlying infectious agent, Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), cannot reliably be detected by standard diagnostic tests due to the long asymptomatic disease stage. The aim of this study was to detect proteomic changes in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from cows of the same herd with different MAP infection status after co-incubation with viable MAP in vitro using label-free LC-MS/MS. In our proteomic discovery experiment, we detected 2631 differentially regulated proteins between cows with negative MAP infection status (so-called MAP-resistant cows) and cows with positive MAP infection status (so-called persistently MAP-infected cows). In MAP-resistant cows, we detected enriched immune-related signaling pathways for TLR2 and MHC class II component proteins, among others, indicating a successful defensive immune response of the cows to MAP. In contrast, persistently MAP-infected cows were not directly enriched in immune-related signaling pathways associated with ITGA2B and KCNMA1, among others. The introduction of these distinct immune responses contributes to a better understanding of the bovine immune response and mechanisms of susceptibility to MAP.