Metabolomics,Unknown,Transcriptomics,Genomics,Proteomics

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Gene expression profiles in testis of pigs with extreme high and low levels of androstenone.

ABSTRACT: Boar taint is a major obstacle when using uncastrated male pigs for swine production. One of the main compounds causing this taint is androstenone, a pheromone produced in porcine testis. Here we use microarrays to study the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously in testis of high and low androstenone boars. The study allows identification of genes and pathways associated with elevated androstenone levels. Testicular tissue was collected from 60 boars, 30 with extreme high and 30 with extreme low levels of androstenone, from each of the two breeds Duroc and Norwegian Landrace. The samples were hybridised to porcine arrays containing 26.877 cDNA clones, detecting 563 and 160 genes that were differentially expressed (p < 0.01) in Duroc and Norwegian Landrace, respectively. Of these significantly up- and down-regulated clones, 72 were found to be common for the two breeds, suggesting both general and breed specific mechanisms in regulation of, or response to androstenone levels in boars. Ten of the most significant genes were chosen for verification of expression patterns by quantitative real competitive PCR and real-time PCR. As expected, our results point towards steroid hormone metabolism and biosynthesis as important biological processes for the androstenone levels, but other potential pathways were identified as well. Among these were oxidoreductase activity, ferric iron binding, iron ion binding and electron transport activities. Genes belonging to the cytochrome P450 and hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase families were highly up-regulated, in addition to several genes encoding different families of conjugation enzymes. Furthermore, a number of genes encoding transcription factors were found both up- and down-regulated. The high number of clones belonging to ferric iron and iron ion binding suggests an importance of these genes, and the association between these pathways and androstenone levels is not previously described. This study contributes to the understanding of the complex genetic system controlling and responding to androstenone levels in pig testis. The identification of new pathways and genes involved in the biosynthesis and metabolism of androstenone is an important first step towards finding molecular markers to reduce boar taint. Keywords: high vs low Testicle samples from animals with extreme androstenone values, 30 high and 30 low from each of the two breeds Norwegian Landrace and Duroc, were used for the experiment. Each microarray was hybridised with one high and one low androstenone sample from the same breed, giving a total of 30 arrays for each breed.

ORGANISM(S): Sus scrofa

SUBMITTER: Jakob Hedegaard

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-7409 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress

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Gene expression profiles in testis of pigs with extreme high and low levels of androstenone.

Moe Maren M Meuwissen Theo T Lien Sigbjørn S Bendixen Christian C Wang Xuefei X Conley Lene Nagstrup LN Berget Ingunn I Tajet Håvard H Grindflek Eli E

BMC genomics 20071107

<h4>Background</h4>Boar taint is a major obstacle when using uncastrated male pigs for swine production. One of the main compounds causing this taint is androstenone, a pheromone produced in porcine testis. Here we use microarrays to study the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously in testis of high and low androstenone boars. The study allows identification of genes and pathways associated with elevated androstenone levels, which is essential for recognising potential molecular markers ...[more]

PMID: 17988377

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Project description:The recent development within high-throughput technologies for expression profiling has allowed for parallel analysis of transcriptomes and proteomes in biological systems such as comparative analysis of transcript and protein levels of tissue regulated genes. Until now, such studies of have only included microarray or short length sequence tags for transcript profiling. Furthermore, most comparisons of transcript and protein levels have been based on absolute expression values from within the same tissue and not relative expression values based on tissue ratios. Presented here is a novel study of two porcine tissues based on integrative analysis of data from expression profiling of identical samples using cDNA microarray, 454-sequencing and iTRAQ-based proteomics. Sequence homology identified 2.541 unique transcripts that are detectable by both microarray hybridizations and 454-sequencing of 1.2 million cDNA tags. Both transcript-based technologies showed high reproducibility between sample replicates of the same tissue, but the correlation across these two technologies was modest. Thousands of genes being differentially expressed were identified with microarray. Out of the 306 differentially expressed genes, identified by 454-sequencing, 198 (65 %) were also found by microarray. The relationship between the regulation of transcript and protein levels was analyzed by integrating iTRAQ-based proteomics data. Protein expression ratios were determined for 354 genes, of which 148 could be mapped to both microarray and 454-sequencing data. A comparison of the expression ratios from the three technologies revealed that differences in transcript and protein levels across heart and muscle tissues are positively correlated. We show that the reproducibility within cDNA microarray and 454-sequencing is high, but that the agreement across these two technologies is modest. We demonstrate that the regulation of transcript and protein levels across identical tissue samples is positively correlated when the tissue expression ratios are used for comparison. The results presented are of interest in systems biology research in terms of integration and analysis of high-throughput expression data from mammalian tissues. Keywords: tissue comparison, platform comparison Tissue samples of heart (HEA) and Longissimus dorsi (LDO) were prepared by pooling from five healthy Hampshire gilts at age four to six months and division into six sub-samples, three for each tissue named HEA1, HEA2, HEA3, LDO1, LDO2 and LDO3. The exact same six tissue samples were used for subsequent expression profiling with cDNA microarray, 454-sequencing and iTRAQ-based proteomics. A reference sample for the cDNA microarray experiment and iTRAQ-based proteomics was constructed by combining the six samples. In the microarray experiment, three cDNA microarray slides were used per sample.

Project description:The introduction of long oligonucleotide-based probes has led to many comparative studies of these two platforms in mammals, but remains to be performed for pig. Further, the characteristics of global gene expression in diverse porcine muscle tissues have not been yet been fully established. This is the first global gene expression study of a collection of nine porcine muscle tissues consisting of cardiac and various skeletal muscle types using both cDNA-based and long oligonucleotide-based microarray platforms. The expression profiles from the two platforms agree in differentiating between cardiac, skeletal red, skeletal intermediate and skeletal white muscle types by producing almost identical hierarchical expression clusters. The clusters from both platforms also reveal that gene expression profiles of the skeletal intermediate type are more similar to the red type than to the white type. Analysis of the ability to identify differentially expressed genes based on gene set analysis and GO term integration show a platform overlap of at least 80% for the cardiac-skeletal comparisons and a platform overlap of at least 58% for the skeletal red-white comparisons. Interestingly, the oligonucleotide platform was always able to identify more GO terms associated with differential expression than the cDNA platform. We further examined the skeletal red-white expression differences and found many GO biological processes that are known to be associated with these phenotypes including calcium ion transport, glycolysis, fatty acid beta-oxidation and muscle contraction. In addition, the expression of genes involved in differentiation between slow (red) and fast (white) muscle types such as MYBPC1, TNNI1, TNNT3 and ATP2A1 is highly regulated between red and white type muscles. Not previously shown to be associated with this tissue difference we found the biological process post-Golgi vesicle-mediated transport. Similar results were obtained with GO classes cellular components and molecular functions. Using the gene expression profiles from the oligonucleotide platform we presented and applied an approach for predicting alternatively spliced transcripts across cardiac and skeletal type muscles. One of the predicted transcripts from the gene named UBE2C has been shown to have six transcript variants in human, but they are not expressed in a cardiac-skeletal specific manner as we have observed here. We speculate that one of our oligonucleotide probes for this gene is able to detect only three of these variants whereas the other detects all six variants and that these variants are expressed in a cardiac-skeletal muscle specific manner. These results supports some of the advantages of using oligonucleotide-based microarray platforms for global gene expression profiling and the observed differences in gene expression among muscle tissues contribute to the understanding of the molecular processes behind porcine muscle biology. Keywords: tissue comparison, platform comparison Muscle tissue samples from heart (HEA), Vastus intermedius (VIN), Infraspinatus (ISP), Supraspinatus (SSP), Biceps femoris (BFE), Longissimus dorsi (LDO), Semimembranosus (SME), Semitendinosus (STE) and Triceps brachii (TBR). A common reference sample was constructed by combining all samples. The exact same tissue samples were used for expression profiling with cDNA microarrays and 70-mer long oligonucleotide microarrays.

Project description:ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Boar taint is the unpleasant odour and flavour of the meat of uncastrated male pigs that is primarily caused by high levels of androstenone and skatole in adipose tissue. Androstenone is a steroid and its levels are mainly genetically determined. Studies on androstenone metabolism have, however, focused on a limited number of genes. Identification of additional genes influencing levels of androstenone may facilitate implementation of marker assisted breeding practices. In this study, microarrays were used to identify differentially expressed genes and pathways related to androstenone metabolism in the liver from boars with extreme levels of androstenone in adipose tissue. RESULTS: Liver tissue samples from 58 boars of the two breeds Duroc and Norwegian Landrace, 29 with extreme high and 29 with extreme low levels of androstenone, were selected from more than 2500 individuals. The samples were hybridised to porcine cDNA microarrays and the 1 % most significant differentially expressed genes were considered significant. Among the differentially expressed genes were metabolic phase I related genes belonging to the cytochrome P450 family and the flavin-containing monooxygenase FMO1. Additionally, phase II conjugation genes including UDP-glucuronosyltransferases UGT1A5, UGT2A1 and UGT2B15, sulfotransferase STE, N-acetyltransferase NAT12 and glutathione S-transferase were identified. Phase I and phase II metabolic reactions increase the water solubility of steroids and play a key role in their elimination. Differential expression was also found for genes encoding 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases (HSD17B2, HSD17B4, HSD17B11 and HSD17B13) and plasma proteins alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) and orosomucoid (ORM1). 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases and plasma proteins regulate the availability of steroids by controlling the amount of active steroids accessible to receptors and available for metabolism. Differences in the expression of FMO1, NAT12, HSD17B2 and HSD17B13 were verified by quantitative real competitive PCR. CONCLUSIONS: A number of genes and pathways related to metabolism of androstenone in liver were identified, including new candidate genes involved in phase I oxidation metabolism, phase II conjugation metabolism, and regulation of steroid availability. The study is a first step towards a deeper understanding of enzymes and regulators involved in pathways of androstenone metabolism and may ultimately lead to the discovery of markers to reduce boar taint. Liver samples from 116 animals with extreme androstenone values, 29 high and 29 low from each of the two breeds Norwegian Landrace and Duroc, were used for this experiment. Each sample was hybridised together with a common refrence resulting in a total of 116 microarrays.

Dataset Information

Gene expression profiles in testis of pigs with extreme high and low levels of androstenone.

Publications

Gene expression profiles in testis of pigs with extreme high and low levels of androstenone.

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