Abstract
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have been emerging as an important regulator in mammalian reproduction via acting as miRNA sponges. However, the circRNAs in porcine ovaries related with litter size remains largely unknown. In this study, porcine ovaries with smaller or larger litter size (LLS) were subjected to high-throughput RNA sequencing. In total, 38,722 circRNAs were identified, of which 1,291 circRNAs were commonly expressed in all samples. There were 56 circRNAs significantly down-regulated and 54 circRNAs up-regulated in LLS pig (|log2 (fold change) | > 1, FDR < 0.05). Bioinformatics predicted that most of circRNAs harbored miRNA binding sites, and the expression patterns of circRNAs and their putative binding miRNAs were validated by qPCR. Moreover, the expression of circ-TCP11/miR-183 was significantly reversely correlated and their direct interaction was confirmed by dual-luciferase assay. Our study indicates that circRNAs may play potential effects on modulating porcine litter size.
Highlights
Increasing litter size has been a global goal for pig breeders and producers, and larger litter size plus shorter farrowing intervals are desperately expected to expand piglets per sow per year, which is the predominant force to boost economic success of sow husbandry (Zak et al, 2017; Kemp et al, 2018)
Three ovaries in each group were subjected to RNA sequencing, and a total of 38,722 circRNAs were predicted, which were widely distributed across all chromosomes (Figures 1A, B)
Only 1,291 circRNAs were expressed in all samples (Figure 1C)
Summary
Increasing litter size has been a global goal for pig breeders and producers, and larger litter size plus shorter farrowing intervals are desperately expected to expand piglets per sow per year, which is the predominant force to boost economic success of sow husbandry (Zak et al, 2017; Kemp et al, 2018). Ovary is an important reproductive organ in females and goes through a series of biological processes during each estrous cycle. Sow prolificacy is tightly modulated by the complex transcriptional network involving coding and non-coding genes in ovaries (Zhang et al, 2015; Huang et al, 2016; Tang et al, 2018). Closed circular RNAs (circRNAs) are emerging as a novel class of modulators for gene expression (Li et al, 2018). Next-generation sequencing has revealed that endogenous circRNAs are generally expressed in various kinds of porcine tissues in a spatio-temporally specific manner, including ovaries (Liang et al, 2017). Recent studies revealed that human ovary-derived circRNAs are involved in ovarian aging (Cai et al, 2018), we investigated whether circRNAs’ profile differs in sows with different litter sizes
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