Abstract
Wool fiber diameter (WFD) is the most important economic trait of wool. However, the genes specifically controlling WFD remain elusive. In this study, the expression profiles of skin from two groups of Gansu Alpine merino sheep with different WFD (a super-fine wool group [FD = 18.0 ± 0.5 μm, n= 3] and a fine wool group [FD=23.0±0.5μm, n=3]) were analyzed using next-generation sequencing–based digital gene expression profiling. A total of 40 significant differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected, including 9 up-regulated genes and 31 down-regulated genes. Further expression profile analysis of natural antisense transcripts (NATs) showed that more than 30% of the genes presented in sheep skin expression profiles had NATs. A total of 7 NATs with significant differential expression were detected, and all were down-regulated. Among of 40 DEGs, 3 DEGs (AQP8, Bos d2, and SPRR) had significant NATs which were all significantly down-regulated in the super-fine wool group. In total of DEGs and NATs were summarized as 3 main GO categories and 38 subcategories. Among the molecular functions, cellular components and biological processes categories, binding, cell part and metabolic process were the most dominant subcategories, respectively. However, no significant enrichment of GO terms was found (corrected P-value >0.05). The pathways that were significantly enriched with significant DEGs and NATs were mainly the lipoic acid metabolism, bile secretion, salivary secretion and ribosome and phenylalanine metabolism pathways (P < 0.05). The results indicated that expression of NATs and gene transcripts were correlated, suggesting a role in gene regulation. The discovery of these DEGs and NATs could facilitate enhanced selection for super-fine wool sheep through gene-assisted selection or targeted gene manipulation in the future.
Highlights
Fine wool sheep, called Merino, is a world famous sheep breed that is known to produce high-quality fine wool
next-generation sequencing (NGS) was performed on 6 individuals of the super fine wool group and the fine wool group, and raw data greater than 5 Mb were obtained for all individuals (Table 1), submitted to the NCBI BioProject database, with the accession number PRJNA274817
Wool fiber diameter (WFD) is highly correlated with the size of Dermal papilla (DP) of HF [17], whose origin can be traced to the dermal condensate, one of the earliest features of the developing HF[19]
Summary
Called Merino, is a world famous sheep breed that is known to produce high-quality fine wool. Dermal papilla (DP) cells are a population of mesenchymal cells at the base of the HF[8], and provide signals that contribute to specifying the size, shape and pigmentation of the wool[9]. It is well known that WFD is significantly associated with size of DP and matrix in mammals [4, 6, 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], and is largely specified post-initiation, during the period of HFs growth and morphogenesis[18]. The size of DP and matrix in mammals is markedly influenced by genetic[10, 11, 21], physiological[13], nutrition[22], hormones[12] during the anagen phase of the hair cycle. There are no studies on the molecular mechanisms of controlling WFD during the anagen phase, and the genes controlling WFD remain elusive [23]
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