Swine

Blood Transcriptome in Healthy Piglets as a Potential Biomarker to Improve Disease Resilience

Authors: , , , , , , , ,

Abstract

Disease resilience is a concept that combines resistance and tolerance. Depending on individual resilience, the performance of pigs can be different in commercial herds, where they are exposed to various pathogens, compared to nucleus breeding herds. Here, we designed a natural disease challenge model in pigs to measure resilience traits and to generate population-level gene expression data. Our results suggested that gene expression patterns in young healthy pigs showed significant associations with mortality following exposure to disease and are, therefore, promising as early disease resilience predictors for use in nucleus breeding programs.

Keywords:

How to Cite: Dekkers, J. C. , Tuggle, C. K. , Dong, Q. , Putz, A. M. , Harding, J. C. , Plastow, G. S. , Lim, K. , Dyck, M. K. & Fortin, F. (2019) “Blood Transcriptome in Healthy Piglets as a Potential Biomarker to Improve Disease Resilience”, Iowa State University Animal Industry Report. 16(1).