X. S. Wang, Zhang, Y., He, Y. H., Ma, P. P., Fan, L. J., Wang, Y. C., Zhang, Y. I., Sun, D. X., Zhang, S. L., Wang, C. D., Song, J. Z., and Yu, Y.,
“Aberrant promoter methylation of the CD4 gene in peripheral blood cells of mastitic dairy cows”, vol. 12, pp. 6228-6239, 2013.
Bovine mastitis is the most common and costly disease of dairy cattle. Cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4) is closely related to the immune response in mastitis. We quantified promoter CpG methylation levels of the CD4 gene in Chinese Holsteins with clinical mastitis (CM) and in healthy controls; these levels were quantitatively detected with bisulfite pyrosequencing assays and confirmed by cloning sequencing. We found that the bovine CD4 promoter had 16% more methyl groups in the cows with CM (75.0 ± 5.8%) compared to the controls (59.0 ± 8.5%).
