Project description:Identification of novel candidate genes associated with intramuscular fat content in porcine longissimus dorsi muscle via transcriptome analysis
Project description:Intramuscular fat content is a known trait that attributes to meat quality, taste and juiciness. MicroRNAs have been reported to play key role in lipid metabolism, hence in fat deposition. There is little understanding of miRNA regulation of IMF content and identification of these non-coding factors is important for further understanding of pathways involved in intramuscular fat deposition Differentially expressed miRNAs were identified and their gene targets predicted.
Project description:The content of intramuscular fat (IMF) is closely related to meat quality traits. In this study, in order to explore the candidate genes related to IMF content, the longissimus dorsi muscle of Guangling donkey was measured for intramuscular fat content. According to its intramuscular fat content, it was divided into two groups, the low fat group (L , N=3) and high-fat group (H, n=3), using RNA-seq to identify differentially expressed genes (DGEs) on the longissimus dorsi muscle tissue of Guangling donkey with high and low intramuscular fat content to reveal the possibility Gene network and metabolic pathways that help increase intramuscular fat content. A total of 167 DEGs (|log2Fold Change|>=1 and FDR<0.05) were detected in the high (H) and low (L) groups of Guangling donkeys, of which 64 were up-regulated genes and 103 were down-regulated genes. The GO enrichment and KEGG pathway analysis showed that these differential genes were enriched in several biological processes and pathways related to adipocyte differentiation, lipid biosynthesis, and neutral lipid metabolism. These results will help to further explore the molecular mechanism of IMF deposition in donkeys and provide a theoretical basis for the molecular breeding of Guangling donkeys.
Project description:Intramuscular fat (IMF) content is an important trait closely correlated with meat quality, which is highly variable among swine breeds from diverse genetic backgrounds. In order to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying porcine meat quality, we adopted RNA-sequencing to detect transcriptome in the longissimus dorsi muscle of Wei pigs (a Chinese indigenous breed) and Yorkshire pigs (a Western lean-type breed) with different IMF content. A total of 717 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in our study, with 323 up-regulated and 394 down-regulated genes in Wei pigs compared with Yorkshire pigs. GO analysis showed that DEGs significantly related to muscle proliferation and development, lipid storage and catabolic, extracellular matrix structural constituent, and neutral amino acid transmembrane transporter activity. Pathway analysis revealed that DEGs associated with fatty acid metabolism, steroid biosynthesis, glycerophospholipid metabolism, protein digestion and absorption, and amino acid metabolism. Quantitative real time PCR confirmed the differential expression of 11 selected DEGs from both pig breeds. The results provide useful information to investigate the transcriptional profiling in skeletal muscle of different pig breeds with divergent phenotypes, and several DEGs can be taken as functional candidate genes for affecting pork quality.
Project description:To optimize the genome annotation, nine tissue and one pool RNA libraries (i.e. heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, muscle, fat, ovary, pool.) were constructed using the Illumina mRNA-spleeneq Prep Kit
Project description:Background The composition of intramuscular fat depends on genetic and environmental factors, including the diet. In pigs, we identified a haplotype of three SNP mutations in the steaoryl-coA desaturase (SCD) gene promoter associated with higher content of monounsaturated fatty acids in intramuscular fat. The second of these three SNPs (rs80912566, C>T) affected a putative retinol response element in the SCD promoter. The effect of dietary vitamin A restriction over intramuscular fat content is controversial in pigs as it seems to depend on the genetic line and the duration of the restriction. This study aims to investigate changes in the muscle transcriptome in SCD rs80912566_TT and CC pigs fed with and without vitamin A supplement during the fattening period. Results Vitamin A did not affect carcass fattening traits and fatty acid composition in muscle, but we observed an interaction between vitamin A and SCD genotype on the desaturation of muscle fatty acids. The diet without vitamin A supplement tended to enlarge the compositional differences between genotypes. The interaction between diet and genotype was also evident at the transcriptome level, the highest number of differentially expressed genes were detected between SCD rs80912566_TT pigs fed with the two diets. Conclusions Restricting dietary vitamin A during the fattening period did not improve intramuscular fat content despite relevant changes in muscle gene expression, both in coding and non-coding genes. Despite this, there was a significant interaction between the SCD genotype and the dietary vitamin A, which affected the quality of the meat through a change in the saturation index of intramuscular fat and activated general pathways of retinol response in a SCD genotype-dependant manner.