Use of the Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) method in veterinary research: A concrete application in the study of the bovine trypanotolerance genetic control.

New postgenomic biotechnologies, such as transcriptome analyses, are now able to characterize the full complement of genes involved in the expression of specific biological functions. One of these is the Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) technique, which consists of the construction of transcripts libraries for a quantitative analysis of the entire gene(s) expressed or inactivated at a particular step of cellular activation. Bioinformatic comparisons in the bovine genomic databases allow the identification of several up- and downregulated genes, expressed sequence tags, and unknown functional genes directly involved in the genetic control of the studied biological mechanism. We present and discuss the preliminary results in comparing the expressed genes in two total mRNA transcripts libraries obtained during an experimental Trypanosoma congolense infection in one trypanotolerant N'Dama animal cow. Knowing all the functional genes involved in the trypanotolerance control will permit validation of some results obtained with the quantitative trait locus approach, to set up specific microarrays sets for further metabolic and pharmacological studies, and to design field marker-assisted selection by introgression programs.