Identifying Cattle Breed-Specific Partner Choice of Transcription Factors during the African Trypanosomiasis Disease Progression Using Bioinformatics Analysis

Abstract

African Animal Trypanosomiasis (AAT) is a disease caused by pathogenic trypanosomes which affects millions of livestock every year causing huge economic losses in agricultural production especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease is spread by the tsetse fly which carries the parasite in its saliva. During the disease progression, the cattle are prominently subjected to anaemia, weight loss, intermittent fever, chills, neuronal degeneration, congestive heart failure, and finally death. According to their different genetic programs governing the level of tolerance to AAT, cattle breeds are classified as either resistant or susceptible. In this study, we focus on the cattle breeds N’Dama and Boran which are known to be resistant and susceptible to trypanosomiasis, respectively. Despite the rich literature on both breeds, the gene regulatory mechanisms of the underlying biological processes for their resistance and susceptibility have not been extensively studied. To address the limited knowledge about the tissue-specific transcription factor (TF) cooperations associated with trypanosomiasis, we investigated gene expression data from these cattle breeds computationally. Consequently, we identified significant cooperative TF pairs (especially D B P − P P A R A and D B P − T H A P 1 in N’Dama and D B P − P A X 8 in Boran liver tissue) which could help understand the underlying AAT tolerance/susceptibility mechanism in both cattle breeds.