Mastitis is one of the costliest diseases in dairy farms caused by infection of different microorganisms such as Escherichia coli, Streptococcus uberis and Staphylococcus aureus. Promoters play an essential role in controlling gene expression and understanding the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation involved in physiological and immunological processes involved in infections. Exploiting regulatory elements such as transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs modules) on the promoter region could reveal co-regulated genes allowing to create regulatory models and to execute a cross-sectional analysis on several databases. In this study, the promoter regions of 11 genes associated with contagious mastitis including CCL4, CXCL8, STAT3, IKBKB, MAPK14, NFKBIA, NFKB1, TNF, IL18, IL6, and HCK were investigated to predict the activating regulatory modules on promoters and also to discover the key related transcription factors. By exploring the promoter regions, 228 genes were discovered comprising the same transcription factors modules. Thirty six out of 228 genes were validated using five microarray datasets. The promoter research of these genes revealed that as many as 7 down-regulated and 12 up-regulated genes are predictable in the network. The genes whose functions were associated with the initial gene list (11 genes), were identified by DAVID queries with TFBSs models. This implies that the approach provides a clear image on the underlying regulatory mechanism of gene expression profile and also offers a novel approach in designing gene networks in cattle.

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