MicroRNA expression in liver, mesenteric lymph node, serum, spleen, tracheal-bronchial lymph node, thymus and white blood cells of calves challenged with bovine viral diarrhea virus, Mycoplasma bovis, or both pathogens

Eleven calves approximately 2 months of age were randomly assigned to one of four groups: Controls (CT; n= 2), challenged with bovine viral diarrhea virus (BV; n= 3), challenged with Mycoplasma bovis (MB; n= 3), or a coinfection in which challenged with bovine viral diarrhea virus and then Mycoplasma bovis (CO; n= 3). On day 0, calves in groups CO and BV were intranasally challenged with bovine viral diarrhea virus and group MB with Mycoplasma bovis. On day 6, CO calves were challenged with Mycoplasma bovis. Calves were euthanized 17 days post-challenge and liver (liv), mesenteric lymph node (mln), serum (ser), spleen (spl), tracheal-bronchial lymph node (tbln), thymus (thy), and white blood cells (wbc), were collected at necropsy. Samples for each tissue for each animal were stored in RNA Later at -80 degrees C until RNA extraction. Small RNAs were extracted from each sample, and high throughput sequencing was done in an Illumina 3000 sequencer.