Abstract
Despite that goat is one of the best nonmodel systems for villus growth studies and hair biology, limited gene resources associated with skin or hair follicles are available. In the present study, using Illumina/Solexa sequencing technology, we de novo assembled 130 million mRNA-Seq reads into a total of 49,115 contigs. Searching public databases revealed that about 45% of the total contigs can be annotated as known proteins, indicating that some of the assembled contigs may have previously uncharacterized functions. Functional classification by KOG and GO showed that activities associated with metabolism are predominant in goat skin during anagen phase. Many signaling pathways was also created based on the mapping of assembled contigs to the KEGG pathway database, some of which have been previously demonstrated to have diverse roles in hair follicle and hair shaft formation. Furthermore, gene expression profiling of three skin types identified ~6,300 transcript-derived contigs that are differentially expressed. These genes mainly enriched in the functional cluster associated with cell cycle and cell division. The large contig catalogue as well as the genes which were differentially expressed in different skin types provide valuable candidates for further characterization of gene functions.
Highlights
Inner Mongolia Cashmere Goat (Capra hircus, IMCG) is a diploid (2n = 60) mammal that belongs to the family of Bovidae
To obtain comprehensive transcripts of skin tissue that provide an overview of gene expression profile during anagen in the cashmere goat, skin tissues from the belly (BL), back (BK), and the side of the body (BS) during anagen were sampled
Through BLAST searching, we found a total of 126 keratin or keratin-associated protein (KAP) encoding sequences presented in our contig database
Summary
Inner Mongolia Cashmere Goat (Capra hircus, IMCG) is a diploid (2n = 60) mammal that belongs to the family of Bovidae It plays an important role in the world animal fiber industry because it can produce high quality underhair (cashmere is the commercial name) and is one of the world’s largest breeding groups. During the period from the summer solstice to midwinter, when the length of day is reduced, cashmere fiber has a high growth speed; in contrast, it becomes low during the period from midwinter to the summer solstice [3, 4]. We observed that cashmere fibers of IMCG are mainly produced by the back (BK) and side of the body (BS) skin of the trunk coat, but few are produced by the belly (BL) skin This indicated that the gene expression patterns of BK and BS skin are different from BL.
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