The transmission dynamics of bluetongue virus (BTV) within a holding are described using a stochastic compartmental model that includes two ruminant host species (cattle and sheep) and the Culicoides vector (Figure 1; Table 1), and was developed from an earlier deterministic formulation of the model [17].
Indeed, expression of the two homologs, the M. agalactiae P48-like and the M. bovis P68, is most likely phase variable in the two ruminant pathogens.
With the availability of detailed sequence information from the two ruminant species (bovine and ovine), the hypothesis has now gained additional support from the experimental data.
This provides information on a comparative basis with the cattle genome by identifying putative recurrent interspecies CNVs between these two ruminant species.
We believe the relative inaccuracy in these cytogenetic maps may account for these differences.> We characterized the sequence architecture of the evolutionary breakpoints for two ruminant rearrangements, one between CHI9 and CHI14 and one in CHI13 (Additional file 6).
To date however, only two ruminant microarray studies have been performed with bovine cells stimulated with LPS, and these studies were performed in vitro [ 10, 11].With respect to sheep, ovine microarrays are not currently available.
The two ruminant morbilliviruses, PPRV and RPV, have common antigens demonstrable in a variety of serologic test systems, and they also show a degree of cross-neutralization (12, 13).
As expected, mice were similar to other omnivores, whereas cattle were far from most foregut herbivores, as were banteng, a close relative of cattle, which may reflect domestication of these two ruminant species.
In order to give a preliminary evaluation of the extent of sequence identity between these two ruminant species, we compared goat genomic sequences longer than 1 kb available in EMBL database with homologous cattle genomic regions.
Of particular importance is the comparison of gene order between the two ruminant species, buffalo and cattle, and an assessment of rearrangements which is independent of previous, more limited comparisons done with specific markers of the two species by somatic hybrid cell analysis and FISH.
