Genomic organization and transcript profiling of the bovine toll-like receptor gene cluster TLR6-TLR1-TLR10

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a family of recognition receptors playing a crucial role in the innate immune system. Different combinations of TLRs are thought to be crucial for effective immune response, thus insight into the organization and expression of TLRs is important for understanding disease resistance. Mastitis is the most frequent and costly disease in dairy production, and the innate immune system is considered to be important in the first line defence against this disease. In the present paper we have characterized the genomic organization of TLR6-TLR1-TLR10 in a ∼ 50 kb region of bovine chromosome 6, including 5′-untranslated exons not previously described. A method for gene expression analysis was developed and used for transcription profiling of the three paralogous genes in different bovine tissues. The expression analysis showed similar expression profiles for TLR1 and TLR6, which indicate a co-regulation of these two genes in cattle. TLR10 had a different expression profile, pointing toward a stronger functional diversification compared to TLR1 and TLR6. The differences in expression are in accordance with the evolutionary history of this gene cluster, where TLR10 diverged from the common ancestral gene before the duplication event that created TLR1 and TLR6.