Abstract
An increasing number of studies have shown that long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are a very important class of non-coding RNAs that plays a vital role in many biological processes. Adipose tissue is an important place for storing energy, but few studies on lincRNAs were related to pig subcutaneous fat development. Here, we used published RNA-seq data from subcutaneous adipose tissue of Italian Large White pigs and identified 252 putative lincRNAs, wherein 34 were unannotated. These lincRNAs had relatively shorter length, lower number of exons, and lower expression level compared with protein-coding transcripts. Gene ontology and pathway analysis indicated that the adjacent genes of lincRNAs were involved in lipid metabolism. In addition, differentially expressed lincRNAs (DELs) between low and high backfat thickness pigs were identified. Through the detection of quantitative trait locus (QTL), DELs were mainly located in QTLs related to adipose development. Based on the expression correlation of DEL genes and their differentially expressed potential target genes, we constructed a co-expression network and a potential pathway of DEL’s effect on lipid metabolism. Our study identified and analyzed lincRNAs in subcutaneous adipose tissue, and results suggested that lincRNAs may be involved in the regulation of subcutaneous fat development. Our findings provided new insights into the biological function of porcine lincRNAs.
Highlights
Pigs are very similar to humans in terms of metabolic characteristics and organ development, so pigs are an ideal animal model for human disease research (Lunney, 2007; Schook et al, 2015)
In the data analysis results of 20 samples (10 fat samples and 10 lean samples), we randomly selected three lincRNA genes (Supplementary Table S5) and their potential target gene (PTG) with significant positive correlation based on the expression level (MSTRG.4365 vs. TKT; MSTRG.10113 vs. STOML2; MSTRG.9843 vs. ELOVL6 and DBI)
A small number of lincRNAs have been revealed in pigs; these lincRNAs play a key role in biological processes (Li et al, 2016; Che et al, 2018)
Summary
Pigs are very similar to humans in terms of metabolic characteristics and organ development, so pigs are an ideal animal model for human disease research (Lunney, 2007; Schook et al, 2015). Atherosclerosis and diabetes are examples of the impact of pigs as biomedical model (Lunney, 2007). These diseases have become the focus of research because of the growing problem of obesity (Lunney, 2007). With the improvement of human living standards, the demand for lean meat rate of pigs is increasing. The 10th rib BFT and days to 100 kg are the economically important traits in pigs and are commonly used to predict carcass lean meat content and growth rate in pig breeding programs, respectively (Guo et al, 2017; Jiang et al, 2018). A previous study indicated that a low amount of subcutaneous fat or backfat deposition means good growth performance (Zambonelli et al, 2016)
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