Abstract
The effects of iodine supplementation on the whole-transcriptome of dairy cow using RNA sequencing has been investigated in this study. Iodine did not influence the milk composition, while an improvement was observed in the immune response as well as in the quality of dairy product. Indeed, the iodine intake specifically influenced the expression of 525 genes and the pathway analysis demonstrated that the most affected among them were related to immune response and oxidative stress. As a consequence, we indirectly showed a better response to bacterial infection because of the reduction of somatic cell counts; furthermore, an improvement of dairy product quality was observed since lipid oxidation reduced in fresh cheese. Such findings, together with the higher milk iodine content, clearly demonstrated that iodine supplementation in dairy cow could represent a beneficial practice to preserve animal health and to improve the nutraceutical properties of milk and its derived products.