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Whole-body adipose tissue multi-omic analyses in sheep reveal molecular mechanisms underlying local adaptation to extreme environments.

ABSTRACT: The fat tail of sheep is an important organ that has evolved to adapt to extreme environments. However, the genetic mechanisms underlying the fat tail phenotype remain poorly understood. Here, we characterize transcriptome and lipidome profiles and morphological changes in 250 adipose tissues from two thin-tailed and three fat-tailed sheep populations in summer and winter. We implement whole-genome selective sweep tests to identify genetic variants related to fat-tails. We identify a set of functional genes that show differential expression in the tail fat of fat-tailed and thin-tailed sheep in summer and winter. These genes are significantly enriched in pathways, such as lipid metabolism, extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, molecular transport, and inflammatory response. In contrast to thin-tailed sheep, tail fat from fat-tailed sheep show slighter changes in adipocyte size, ECM remodeling, and lipid metabolism, and had less inflammation in response to seasonal changes, indicating improved homeostasis. Whole-genome selective sweep tests identify genes involved in preadipocyte commitment (e.g., BMP2, PDGFD) and terminal adipogenic differentiation (e.g., VEGFA), which could contribute to enhanced adipocyte hyperplasia. Altogether, we establish a model of regulatory networks regulating adipose homeostasis in sheep tails. These findings improve our understanding of how adipose homeostasis is maintained, in response to extreme environments in animals.

SUBMITTER: Xu YX

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9908986 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Whole-body adipose tissue multi-omic analyses in sheep reveal molecular mechanisms underlying local adaptation to extreme environments.

Xu Ya-Xi YX Wang Bo B Jing Jia-Nan JN Ma Rui R Luo Yan-Hui YH Li Xin X Yan Ze Z Liu Ya-Jing YJ Gao Lei L Ren Yan-Ling YL Li Meng-Hua MH Lv Feng-Hua FH

Communications biology 20230208 1

The fat tail of sheep is an important organ that has evolved to adapt to extreme environments. However, the genetic mechanisms underlying the fat tail phenotype remain poorly understood. Here, we characterize transcriptome and lipidome profiles and morphological changes in 250 adipose tissues from two thin-tailed and three fat-tailed sheep populations in summer and winter. We implement whole-genome selective sweep tests to identify genetic variants related to fat-tails. We identify a set of func ...[more]

PMID: 36755107

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Project description:BackgroundChinese indigenous sheep are valuable resources with unique features and characteristics. They are distributed across regions with different climates in mainland China; however, few reports have analyzed the environmental adaptability of sheep based on their genome. We examined the variants and signatures of selection involved in adaptation to extreme humidity, altitude, and temperature conditions in 173 sheep genomes from 41 phenotypically and geographically representative Chinese indigenous sheep breeds to characterize the genetic basis underlying environmental adaptation in these populations.ResultsBased on the analysis of population structure, we inferred that Chinese indigenous sheep are divided into four groups: Kazakh (KAZ), Mongolian (MON), Tibetan (TIB), and Yunnan (YUN). We also detected a set of candidate genes that are relevant to adaptation to extreme environmental conditions, such as drought-prone regions (TBXT, TG, and HOXA1), high-altitude regions (DYSF, EPAS1, JAZF1, PDGFD, and NF1) and warm-temperature regions (TSHR, ABCD4, and TEX11). Among all these candidate genes, eight ABCD4, CNTN4, DOCK10, LOC105608545, LOC121816479, SEM3A, SVIL, and TSHR overlap between extreme environmental conditions. The TSHR gene shows a strong signature for positive selection in the warm-temperature group and harbors a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) missense mutation located between positions 90,600,001 and 90,650,001 on chromosome 7, which leads to a change in the protein structure of TSHR and influences its stability.ConclusionsAnalysis of the signatures of selection uncovered genes that are likely related to environmental adaptation and a SNP missense mutation in the TSHR gene that affects the protein structure and stability. It also provides information on the evolution of the phylogeographic structure of Chinese indigenous sheep populations. These results provide important genetic resources for future breeding studies and new perspectives on how animals can adapt to climate change.

Project description:At a global level, climate change is expected to result in more frequent and higher-intensity weather events, with impacts ranging from inconvenient to catastrophic. The potential for disasters to act as "focusing events" for policy change, including adaptation to climate change risk, is well known. Moreover, local action is an important element of climate change adaptation and related risk management efforts. As such, there is a good reason to expect local communities to mobilize in response to disaster events, both with immediate response and recovery-focused activities, as well as longer-term preparedness and adaptation-focused public policy changes. However, scholars also note that the experience of disaster does not always yield policy change; indeed, disasters can also result in policy inertia and failure, perhaps as often or more often than major policy change. This study poses two key research questions. First, we ask to what degree policy change occurs in communities impacted by an extreme weather event. Second, we seek to understand the conditions that lead to adaptation-oriented policy adoption in response to an extreme weather event. Our results suggest two main recipes for future-oriented policy adoption in the wake of an extreme weather event. For both recipes, a high-impact event is a necessary condition for future-oriented policy adoption. In the first recipe for change, policy adoption occurs in Democratic communities with highly focused media attention. The second, less expected recipe for change involves Republican communities that have experienced other uncommon weather events in the recent past. We use a comparative case approach with 15 cases and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis methods. Our approach adds to the existing literature on policy change and local adaptation by selecting a mid-N range of cases where extreme weather events have the potential to act as focusing events, thereby sidestepping selection on the dependent variable. Our approach also takes advantage of a novel method for measuring attention, the latent Dirichlet allocation approach.

Dataset Information

Whole-body adipose tissue multi-omic analyses in sheep reveal molecular mechanisms underlying local adaptation to extreme environments.

Publications

Whole-body adipose tissue multi-omic analyses in sheep reveal molecular mechanisms underlying local adaptation to extreme environments.

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