In caruncles, subtle differences in gene expression levels were found at the early stages of the infection (10 dpi) and, more particularly, in the case of the low-virulence isolate (Nc-Spain1H) where only 4 genes were differentially expressed (e.g., SLC12A7, KIFC3, LRFN4 and TOLLIP) with lower mean expression levels across infected animals than noninfected animals (Figure 2A). Here, TOLLIP is linked to infection.