Association of toll-like receptor 4 TLR 4 gene exon 3 variants with serostatus of the ovine Johne's disease paratuberculosis in Turkish sheep

Abstract

In the present study, the effect of exon 3 of the toll-like receptor 4 TLR4 gene on ovine Johne?s disease OJD serostatus was tested in Turkish sheep breeds. Initially, a retrospective cohort was performed using indirect ELISA on a commingled flock consisting of 3 native and 4 composite breeds n = 1750 . Case-control matched pairs were constructed according to the breed type and age n = 188 . Subsequently, exon 3 of the TLR4 gene was sequenced and coding variants were investigated. A total of 15 single nucleotide polymorphisms SNPs were detected and 12 of those SNPs were nonsynonymous. Next, 3 haplotype blocks consisting of these SNPs were constructed. The McNemar's test was conducted on both the SNPs and haplotypes. As a consequence, within the detection limits power, 0.95; odds ratio > 3.3 , no association was detected between the OJD serostatus and TLR4 exon 3 coding variants in Turkish sheep.