Deciphering the role of MFGE8 in lactation using CRISPR-CAS9 based gene editing in Buffalo mammary epithelial cells

Milk fat globule EGF factor 8 (MFGE8) is a glycoprotein which plays a crucial role in mammary gland remodeling. Our group previously identified MFGE8 as a marker associated with high milk yielding cows. Here, we generated MFGE8 knock-out buffalo mammary epithelial cells (BuMEC) via CRISPR-cas9 technology to decipher its role in lactation. gRNA3 reduced MFGE8 expression with good efficiency which was confirmed at transcriptomic and proteomic level and the stable knock-out cells obtained were named mfge8-/-/gRNA3. The amplicon sequencing of the edited region using next generation sequencing (NGS) showed that 54% of total reads showed indels, 3-4 bp upstream to PAM site in 2nd exon. A total 4282 proteins were identified when proteome level changes were examined and 178 were found to be differentially expressed above and below a threshold of ≥ 1.5 and ≤ 0.6. Major DEPs were found to be associated with regulation of hydrolase activity, endopeptidase activity and cytoskeletal organization and some DEPs including FABP3, FABP4, FABP5, KNG1, MT2A, CD82, SLC7A1 and SERPINH1 belonged to genes associated with milk synthesis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study which provides a comprehensive proteome profile of MFGE8 knockout BuMEC and explores downstream effects of disruption of MFGE8 gene.