Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2021, Vol. 52 ›› Issue (12): 3403-3412.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2021.012.008

• ANIMAL GENETICS AND BREEDING • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Transcriptome Analysis of Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue of Duolang Sheep and Small Tail Han Sheep

LIU Tianyi, FENG Hui, Salsabeel Yousuf, XIE Lingli, MIAO Xiangyang*   

  1. Institute of Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China
  • Received:2021-04-09 Online:2021-12-25 Published:2021-12-22

Abstract: The aim of this study was to explore the differentially expressed genes in the subcutaneous adipose tissue of Duolang sheep (group D) and Small Tail Han sheep (group X), study their potential effects, and to provide a basis for understanding the developmental law of sheep fat tissue and the prevention and treatment of lipid metabolism-related diseases. In the study, healthy, female adult Duolang sheep and Small Tail Han sheep with good body condition, similar in-species body weight (about 50 kg) and differences in fat deposition ability were selected as the test materials, and they were divided into group D (experimental group) and group X (control group), with 3 replicates in each group. The subcutaneous adipose tissue located in the longissimus dorsi muscle was collected. RNA-Seq technology and bioinformatics methods were used to perform the transcriptome sequencing and the results analysis. According to the criteria of|Fold change| ≥ 2 and P adjust ≤ 0.05, differentially expressed genes were screened. The differentially expressed mRNAs were analyzed by GO and KEGG enrichment to obtain the differential genes related to fat deposition and lipid metabolism. Meantime, the reliability of the sequencing data was verified by real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR for 6 randomly selected differentially expressed genes. The results showed that a total of 38 672 known mRNAs and 1 606 new mRNAs were detected in the 6 samples. There were 839 differentially expressed genes in the two groups, of which 320 were up-regulated and 519 were down-regulated in Duolang sheep. Through GO function annotation analysis, it was found that differentially expressed genes were mainly involved in lipid catabolism process, lipid biosynthesis process, lipid catabolism negative regulation process, MAPK cascade reaction regulation, and reaction to triglycerides. The enrichment results of KEGG pathways showed that PI3K-Akt, MAPK, insulin and PPAR signaling pathways were significantly enriched. The qRT-PCR results were consistent with the sequencing results, indicating that the sequencing results were reliable. Through transcriptome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis of subcutaneous fat tissue of Duolang sheep and Small Tail Han sheep, differentially expressed genes related to fat deposition and lipid metabolism were screened, these genes mainly involved in lipid biosynthesis, lipid metabolism and other processes. Among them, COL1A1, AKT2, SCD, LPL, PCK1 and PPP2R5A might play important roles in the deposition and metabolism of subcutaneous fat tissue in Duolang sheep and Small Tail Han sheep.

Key words: mRNA, subcutaneous fat, fat deposition, lipid metabolism, sheep

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