Abstract
BackgroundIntramuscular fat (IMF) content is a vital parameter for assessing pork quality. Increasing evidence has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in regulating porcine IMF deposition. Here, a novel miRNA implicated in porcine IMF adipogenesis was found, and its effect and regulatory mechanism were further explored with respect to intramuscular preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation.ResultsBy porcine adipose tissue miRNA sequencing analysis, we found that miR-146a-5p is a potential regulator of porcine IMF adipogenesis. Further studies showed that miR-146a-5p mimics inhibited porcine intramuscular preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation, while the miR-146a-5p inhibitor promoted cell proliferation and adipogenic differentiation. Mechanistically, miR-146a-5p suppressed cell proliferation by directly targeting SMAD family member 4 (SMAD4) to attenuate TGF-β signaling. Moreover, miR-146a-5p inhibited the differentiation of intramuscular preadipocytes by targeting TNF receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6) to weaken the AKT/mTORC1 signaling downstream of the TRAF6 pathway.ConclusionsMiR-146a-5p targets SMAD4 and TRAF6 to inhibit porcine intramuscular adipogenesis by attenuating TGF-β and AKT/mTORC1 signaling, respectively. These findings provide a novel miRNA biomarker for regulating intramuscular adipogenesis to promote pork quality.
Highlights
Intramuscular fat (IMF) content is a vital parameter for assessing pork quality
These findings implying that miR146a-5p may have a key effect on IMF deposition, and our results reveal that miR-146a-5p inhibits intramuscular preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation by targeting SMAD family member 4 (SMAD4) and TNF receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6) through TGF-β and AKT/ mTORC1 signaling pathways
The KEGG pathway analysis predicted that miR-146a-5p is involved in the TGF-β, AKT and mTORC pathways (Fig. 1c), and the GO term analysis suggested that miR-146a-5p can regulate cell proliferation and fat cell differentiation (Fig. 1d)
Summary
Intramuscular fat (IMF) content is a vital parameter for assessing pork quality. Increasing evidence has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in regulating porcine IMF deposition. A novel miRNA implicated in porcine IMF adipogenesis was found, and its effect and regulatory mechanism were further explored with respect to intramuscular preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation. Intramuscular fat (IMF) content is implicated in pork tenderness, flavor, and juiciness, and is an important indicator for assessing pork quality [1, 2]. Increasing evidence has shown that miRNAs, including miR-206 [9], miR-1495p [10] and miR-204-5p [11], play key roles in preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation. We speculated that these miRNAs may be key regulators of porcine IMF deposition through their target genes
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