Johnston, DayleEarley, BernadetteMcCabe, Matthew S.Lemon, KennethDuffy, CatherineMcMenamy, MichaelCosby, S. LouiseKim, JaeWooBlackshields, GordonTaylor, Jeremy F.Waters, Sinead M.2020-05-062020-05-062019-10-14Johnston, D., Earley, B., McCabe, M. S., Lemon, K., Duffy, C., McMenamy, M., Cosby, S. L., Kim, J., Blackshields, G., Taylor, J. F. and Waters, S. M. (2019) ‘Experimental challenge with bovine respiratory syncytial virus in dairy calves: bronchial lymph node transcriptome response’, Scientific Reports. Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 9(1). doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-51094-z.2045-2322https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51094-zPublication history: Accepted - 19 September 2019; Published online - 14 October 2019.Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) is the leading cause of mortality in calves. The objective of this study was to examine the response of the host’s bronchial lymph node transcriptome to Bovine Respiratory Syncytial Virus (BRSV) in a controlled viral challenge. Holstein-Friesian calves were either inoculated with virus (103.5 TCI D50/ml × 15 ml) (n = 12) or mock challenged with phosphate buffered saline (n = 6). Clinical signs were scored daily and blood was collected for haematology counts, until euthanasia at day 7 post-challenge. RNA was extracted and sequenced (75 bp paired-end) from bronchial lymph nodes. Sequence reads were aligned to the UMD3.1 bovine reference genome and differential gene expression analysis was performed using EdgeR. There was a clear separation between BRSV challenged and control calves based on gene expression changes, despite an observed mild clinical manifestation of the disease. Therefore, measuring host gene expression levels may be beneficial for the diagnosis of subclinical BRD. There were 934 differentially expressed genes (DEG) (p < 0.05, FDR <0.1, fold change >2) between the BRSV challenged and control calves. Over-represented gene ontology terms, pathways and molecular functions, among the DEG, were associated with immune responses. The top enriched pathways included interferon signaling, granzyme B signaling and pathogen pattern recognition receptors, which are responsible for the cytotoxic responses necessary to eliminate the virus.en© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Article