Abstract:

The study aimed to screen the differentially expressed genes of skin tissue in fine wool sheep with different fiber diameter. Affymetrix GeneChip ® Bovine Genome Array and Agilent Sheep Oligo Microarray were used to screen differentially expressed genes of skin tissue in fine wool sheep with different fiber diameter. Significance Analysis of Microarray (SAM) methods was used to identify the differentially expressed genes. GO (Gene Ontology) and the pathway analyses were conducted on differentially expressed genes using a free web-based Molecular Annotation System 3.0 (MAS 3.0). A total of 267 genes were identified to be differentially expressed genes from 2 different Microarray, 106 were up-regulated expression genes and 161 were down-regulated expression genes. GO and Kegg analysis revealed that the expression levels of the most differentially expressed genes were related to cell proliferation，differentiation，apoptosis, protein biosynthesis, Wnt signaling pathway and Keratin constitution etc. Subsequently, Real-time PCR was performed to validate seven differentially expressed genes which were screened out by the microarray approach and sufficient consistency was observed by the two methods. The results suggest that the gene expression profiles of fine wool sheep with different fiber diameter are variant，their different expression may alter the formation and differentiation of skin follicle and wool fiber, and some important genes identified may be useful in further study on molecu1ar markers of fiber diameter in fine wool sheep.