1 Proceedings of the World Congress on Genecs Applied to Livestock Producon, 11.211 The expression of immune related genes blood leukocytes of goats infected with small ruminant lentivirus E. Bagnicka 1 , D. Reczyńska 1 , M. Czopowicz 2 , J. Jarczak 1 , M. Mickiewicz 2 , D. Słoniewska 1 & J. Kaba 2 1 Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding Polish Academy of Sciences, Department of Animal Improvement, Jastrzebiec, Postępu 36A str., 05-552 Magdalenka, Poland e.bagnicka@ighz.pl. (Corresponding author) 2 Laboratory of Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Nowoursynowska 166 str., 02-787 Warsaw, Poland Introduction Small ruminant lentivirus (SRLV), as a member of the Retroviridae family and Lentivirinae subfamily, is related to feline (FIV), simian (SIV) and human (HIV) immunodeficiency viruses. It is believed that unlike those, it does not cause immune deficiency but rather chronic caprine arthritis-encephalitis (CAE). However, the virus infection also affects the expression of some immune genes (Jarczak et al., 2016; Kaba et al., 2011). SRLVs mostly infect macrophages, monocytes and dendritic cells (Blacklaws, 2012). Both cytokines and acute phase proteins (APPs) take part in the immune response. The changes in the cytokine expression, caused by SRLV, have been observed mostly in experimentally infected animals and in vitro studies (Lechner et al., 1997a; Lechner et al., 1997b). Until now six APPs were identified in goats, such as: SAA, Hp, Cp, Fb, AGP and LALBA (Tothova et al., 2014). This study aimed to investigate the expression of cytokines and APPs at the mRNA level in blood leukocytes of non-infected and naturally SRLV-infected dairy goats to indicate the cytokines and APP involved in the immunological response against these viruses. 2. Materials and methods The study was conducted during the two lactations on 24 dairy goats in their 2 nd to 6 th lactation. The goats were divided into two equal, analogous groups by parity: SRLV-free and SRLV naturally infected animals. The selection of animals was based on the results of at least two serological ELISAs (IDEXX CAE/MVV, Finland) conducted not less than 6 months apart. Animals showed no signs of any other diseases. Blood samples were taken 5 times during lactation (0 th , 30 th , 60 th , 140 th , and 200 th day of lactation). One µg of RNA was reverse transcribed into cDNA using a Transcriptor First Strand cDNA Synthesis Kit (Roche, Switzerland). The housekeeping gene YWHAZ was chosen as the reference, while the sequences of primers for the studied genes (cytokines: IL-1α, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, IL-16, IL-18, IFNα, IFNβ, IFNγ, TNFα and APPs: SAA, Hp, CRP, AGP4, LALBA) were designed on the basis of Capra hircus or Bos taurus sequences (NCBI) or taken from the literature(Table 1. – Supplementary data). The qPCR method in a LightCycler 480 System (Roche, Switzerland) was used to measure the transcript levels. Reactions were carried out in triplicate with a non- template control. Before the statistical analysis, all the traits were transformed into natural 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46