Transcriptome profile at different physiological stages reveals potential mode for curly fleece in Chinese tan sheep

Xiaolong Kang, Gang Liu, Yufang Liu, Qinqin Xu, Ming Zhang, Meiying Fang, Xiaolong Kang, Gang Liu, Yufang Liu, Qinqin Xu, Ming Zhang, Meiying Fang

Abstract

Tan sheep (Ovis aries), a Chinese indigenous breed, has special curly fleece after birth, especially at one month old. However, this unique phenotype disappears gradually with age and the underlying reasons of trait evolvement are still unknown. In this study, skin transcriptome data was used to study this issue. In total 51,215 transcripts including described transcripts and transfrags were identified. Pathway analysis of the top 100 most highly expressed transcripts, which included TCHH and keratin gene family members, such as KRT25, KRT5, KRT71, KRT14 and others, showed pathways known to be relevant to hair/fleece development and function. Six hundred differentially expressed (DE) transcripts were detected at two different physiological ages (one-month-old with curly fleece and 48-month-old without curly fleece) and were categorized into three major functional groups: cellular component, molecular function, and biological process. The top six functional categories included cell, cell part, cellular process, binding, intracellular, metabolic process. The detected differentially expressed genes were particularly involved in signal, signal peptide, disulfide bond, glycoprotein and secreted terms, respectively. Further splicing isoform analysis showed that the metallothionein 3 isoform was up-regulated in Tan lamb skin, indicating that it may be related to the conformation of curly fleece in Chinese Tan lamb. The hair-related important differentially expressed genes (SPINK4, FGF21, ESRα, EphA3, NTNG1 and GPR110) were confirmed by qPCR analysis. We deduced that the differences existed in expressed transcripts, splice isoforms and GO categories between the two different physiological stages, which might constitute the major reasons for explaining the trait evolvement of curly fleece in Chinese Tan sheep. This study provides some clues for elucidating the molecular mechanism of fleece change with age in Chinese Tan sheep, as well as supplying some potential values for understanding human hair disorder and texture changes.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1. The Chinese Tan sheep and…
Figure 1. The Chinese Tan sheep and its fleece.
A: The Chinese Tan lamb (L); B: The pelt of Tan lamb at one month old; C: The Chinese adult Tan sheep (A); D: The pelt of Tan adult sheep.
Figure 2. Expression of the top 20…
Figure 2. Expression of the top 20 most highly expressed genes in sheep skin.
The x-axis shows gene ID; y-axis shows gene expression level (FPKM).
Figure 3. Statistics of mainly alternative splicing…
Figure 3. Statistics of mainly alternative splicing events.
The first column shows the types of alternative transcript events; the second column shows the splicing graphs and the third to fifth column shows the number of AS events in A and L combined group, A group and L group, respectively.
Figure 4. Functional categorization of differentially expressed…
Figure 4. Functional categorization of differentially expressed genes based on known genes in the Uniprot database.
The x-axis shows the 2nd level term of Gene Ontology; y-axis shows percent of genes in DE genes.
Figure 5. The expression level of differently…
Figure 5. The expression level of differently expressed genes validated by qPCR.

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Source: PubMed

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