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Mastitis is one of the most challenging diseases with immense economic impacts in dairy animals. Due to the high prevalence of mastitis and its effects on milk quality and cow well-being, there is interest in investigating novel genomic methods to achieve increased mastitis resistance. The objective of this thesis was to identify the genetic mechanisms that regulate bovine host defense to intramammary infections, based on milk somatic cell transcriptome from Holstein cows. This research examined genes and mRNA isoforms differentially expressed between healthy and mastitic quarters of the udder that were involved with immune response to intramammary infection. A list of nine functional candidate genes were identified which provide possible insight for the phenotypic variation of resistance observed between healthy and mastitic dairy cows. Among the list of nine candidate genes, QTL regions within these genes that could impact phenotypic variation in regards to mastitis resistance were explored. |
