Selection of Reference Genes for Gene Expression Studies in Porcine Whole Blood and Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells under Polyinosinic:Polycytidylic Acid Stimulation

Wang, Jiying; Wang, Yanping; Wang, Huaizhong; Hao, Xiaojing; Wu, Ying; Guo, Jianfeng

Whole blood, especially peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) isolated from it, consists of many types of immune cells, such as lymphocytes, granulocyte and monocytes/macrophages, can produce different receptors and cytokines that lead to immediate innate immune responses (Gao et al., 2010; Uddin et al., 2012) . As in vitro models, they have been widely used to dissect the pathogenesis and genetics behind infection and stimulation through gene expression studies (Gao et al., 2010; . Polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (poly I:C) is an analogue of viral double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) that can serve as pathogen-associated molecular pattern and activates innate immunity through two major dsRNA sensors, toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) and melanoma differentiation associated protein-5 (MDA5) (McCartney et al., 2009) . Using the poly I:C as an immunologic stimulant is an important experimental measure to study the immune regulation of an organism to RNA viruses (Caskey et al., 2011; Cao et al., 2013) .