Abstract
The Chinese forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii) is an economically important species distributed throughout southwest China and northern Vietnam. Occurrence and development of disease are aggravated by inbreeding and genetic diversity declines in captive musk deer populations. Deep transcriptomics investigation may provide a promising way to improve genetic health of captive and wild FMD population. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), which regulate gene expression by targeting and suppressing of mRNAs, play an important role in physiology and organism development control. In this study, RNA-seq technology was adopted to characterize the miRNA transcriptome signature among six tissues (heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, and muscle) in Chinese forest musk deer at two years of age. Deep sequencing generated a total of 103,261,451 (~87.87%) good quality small RNA reads; of them 6,622,520 were unique across all six tissues. A total of 2890 miRNAs were identified, among them 1129 were found to be expressed in all tissues. Moreover, coexpression of 20 miRNAs (>2000RPM) in all six tissues and top five highly expressed miRNAs in each tissue implied the crucial and particular function of them in FMD physiological processes. Our findings of forest musk deer miRNAs supplement the database of transcriptome information for this species and conduce to our understanding of forest musk deer biology.
Highlights
The forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii, FMD) is commercially famous for musk production, due to its cosmetic and alleged pharmaceutical properties [1]
The purity and yield of RNA were determined using with a Qubit 3.0 Fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, USA) and the RNA integrity number (RIN) [13] was determined using the Agilent Bioanalyzer, which reported an RNA integrity number of >8.5 for all samples
The sRNA profiles were generated by sequencing six tissues namely, heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney, and muscle of FMD and their length distribution summarized in Table 1 and Figure S1
Summary
The forest musk deer (Moschus berezovskii, FMD) is commercially famous for musk production, due to its cosmetic (perfume industry) and alleged pharmaceutical properties [1]. It is regrettable that the musk was secreted by preputial gland of adult male FMD in a very limited amount. The population of wild FMD has been declined rapidly due to considerable poaching and massive habitat destruction and become extraordinarily endangered. The wild FMD listed in Appendix II in CITES and under class I state key protection in China (http://www.iucnredlist.org/). Since the 1960s, FMD farms have been set up to conserve wild populations and obtain musk resources in a safe and sustainable way in China [2]. Survival of captive musk deer is considerably affected by high incidence of diseases, like Diarrhea, gastrointestinal diseases, dyspepsia, pneumonia, metritis, urinary stones, and abscesses which gravely affect the population growth [3]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
