Time course of the response to ACTH in pig: biological and transcriptomic study

• Published in: BMC genomics 2015-11, Vol.16 (958), p.961-961, Article 961
• Main Authors: Sautron, Valérie, Terenina, Elena, Gress, Laure, Lippi, Yannick, Billon, Yvon, Larzul, Catherine, Liaubet, Laurence, Villa-Vialaneix, Nathalie, Mormède, Pierre
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: ACTH; Adrenocorticotropic Hormone - pharmacology; Animal biology; Animals; Female; Gene expression; Genetic aspects; Homeostasis; Hydrocortisone; Hydrocortisone - blood; Kinetics; Life Sciences; Male; Observations; Properties; Stress (Physiology); Stress, Physiological - drug effects; Stress, Physiological - genetics; Swine; Transcriptome - drug effects
• ISSN: 1471-2164; 1471-2164
• DOI: 10.1186/s12864-015-2118-8

HPA axis plays a major role in physiological homeostasis. It is also involved in stress and adaptive response to the environment. In farm animals in general and specifically in pigs, breeding strategies have highly favored production traits such as lean growth rate, feed efficiency and prolificacy at the cost of robustness. On the hypothesis that the HPA axis could contribute to the trade-off between robustness and production traits, we have designed this experiment to explore individual variation in the biological response to the main stress hormone, cortisol, in pigs. We used ACTH injections to trigger production of cortisol in 120 juvenile Large White (LW) pigs from 28 litters and the kinetics of the response was measured with biological variables and whole blood gene expression at 4 time points. A multilevel statistical analysis was used to take into account the longitudinal aspect of the data. Cortisol level reached its peak 1 h after ACTH injection. White blood cell composition was modified with a decrease of lymphocytes and monocytes and an increase of granulocytes (F D R