The bactericidal/permeability increasing protein (BPI) has an important function of nonspecific killing of Gram-negative bacteria. In this study, qPCR was used to detect the expression of the BPI gene in twelve tissues of Meishan piglets from birth to weaning. BPI gene overexpression, bacterial adhesions count and indirect immunofluorescence were applied to analyze the relationship between BPI gene expression and the infectivity of Escherichia coli and Salmonella. The results showed that the BPI gene was expressed highly in duodenum, jejunum and ileum (fold changes of relative expression levels were more than 10 000, 500 and 200, respectively). The expression of the BPI gene at 35 days of age was significantly higher (P