Project description:Efforts to implement effective assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to extricate the northern white rhinoceros (NWR; Ceratotherium simum cottoni) from extinction, could be unconventionally offset from studies carried out using the southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) as a relative model species. The bi-directional communication and critical transport of regulatory molecules controlling follicular growth and oocyte development are in part mediated through extracellular vesicles (EVs), which encompass a highly conserved and advanced paracrine signaling mechanism important in shuttling unique cargo such as microRNAs (miRNAs). In this study, critical miRNAs for follicular development were identified, proposing novel approaches using EV-mediated miRNA to possibly improve the in vitro technologies outcome in a multitude of species.
Project description:The northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) genome and annotation were previously published, but the annotation contained few genes, with many annotation misalignments, and nomenclature not matching HGNC/VGNC naming conventions, making transcriptional studies very difficult. We used in vivo collected granulosa cells for RNA sequencing and de novo transcript assembly through StringTie to identify all nucleotide gene sequences in our samples. Through extensive manual curation we were able to generate a greatly improved genome annotation increasing gene numbers by 81%. This will greatly enable researchers in this field to utilize the genome and annotation to complete transcriptional studies with this species.
Project description:Mapping the follicle-specific regulation of extracellular vesicle-mediated microRNA transport in the southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum)
