Divergent transcriptomic trajectories in CD4/CD8β/TcR1 bead-enriched peripheral lymphocyte fraction following experimental infection with low- and high-virulence strains of noncytopathic bovine viral diarrhea virus type 2

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) strains of differing virulence are associated with distinct clinical and lymphoid outcomes, but transcriptional responses within peripheral lymphocyte compartments remain incompletely defined. Here, we performed RNA-seq on CD4/CD8β/TcR1 bead-enriched peripheral lymphocyte fractions from calves experimentally infected with low-virulence or high-virulence noncytopathic BVDV strains (BVDV2-RS886 and BVDV2-1373, respectively) and sampled on days 0, 3, and 15 days post-inoculation. Because group sizes were small (n = 3 per group), analyses were interpreted as exploratory. Marker-gene analyses indicated that the sequenced material represented a T-cell-enriched but compositionally heterogeneous peripheral lymphocyte fraction. At day 3, both infection groups showed strong induction of interferon-responsive genes, including OAS family members, ISG15, IFI44/IFI44L, RSAD2, DDX58, and ZBP1. The high-virulence group additionally showed broader reduction of transcripts associated with lymphocyte signaling, trafficking, and biosynthetic activity. By day 15, the low-virulence group showed only a small residual response, whereas the high-virulence group remained broadly perturbed, with reduced abundance of multiple adaptive immune and antigen-presentation-associated transcripts in the bead-enriched fraction. These data define divergent temporal transcriptomic trajectories associated with BVDV2 virulence and provide a hypothesis-generating resource for future studies using phenotypically defined bovine lymphocyte subsets.