Regulation of Swine Growth by Backfat Tissue during Growing and Finishing Stages

Young-Jun Seo,Kyu-Sang Lim,Byeonghwi Lim,Jun-Mo Kim,Do-Young Kim

doi:10.3390/ani11123511

Young-Jun Seo, Kyu-Sang Lim + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11123511

Copy DOI

Abstract

Simple SummarySwine have a large influence on livestock animals. In particular, Korean native pigs (KNPs) have unique traits in their body composition including lipids and proteins. In this study, we performed RNA-sequencing analysis to identify porcine transcriptomic changes during growing and finishing stages in the backfat tissue of KNP and Yorkshire pig crossbreeds. Enrichment analysis revealed that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were significantly influenced by lipid metabolism and hormonal changes. Network analysis showed that the LEP and ACTC1 genes were connected with significant terminologies which resulted from up- and down-regulated DEGs. The results of our analysis indicate that backfat tissue could regulate swine biology during stages of growth. Consequently, our analysis provided comprehensive understanding for transcriptomic changes during growth periods.Recently, interest in the function of pig backfat (BF) has increased in the field of livestock animals, and many transcriptome-based studies using commercial pig breeds have been conducted. However, there is a lack of comprehensive studies regarding the biological mechanisms of Korean native pigs (KNPs) and Yorkshire pig crossbreeds. In this study, therefore, BF samples of F1 crossbreeds of KNPs and Yorkshire pigs were investigated to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and their related terms using RNA-sequencing analysis. DEG analysis identified 611 DEGs, of which 182 were up-regulated and 429 were down-regulated. Lipid metabolism was identified in the up-regulated genes, whereas growth and maturation-related terminologies were identified in the down-regulated genes. LEP and ACTC1 were identified as highly connected core genes during functional gene network analysis. Fat tissue was observed to affect lipid metabolism and organ development due to hormonal changes driven by transcriptional alteration. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of BF contribution to crossbreeds of KNPs and Yorkshire pigs during growth periods.

Highlights

Pigs are important animals that fulfil a significant proportion of global meat demand [1,2]
The RNA-seq data processing results showed that the 12 total samples between the 10 weeks of age (10 W) and 26 weeks of age (26 W) groups had an average of 34,923,354 raw reads and an average guanine–cytosine (GC) content of 50.82%
A previous study reported that pigs reached their highest fat content (~15%) at 21 days after birth [35]; the fat synthesis gene becomes progressively less expressed after 21 days of postnatal development [35]

Summary

Introduction

Pigs are important animals that fulfil a significant proportion of global meat demand [1,2]. Fat deposition and growth rates are significant economic traits in swine and have been intensively studied in pig genetics [3]. Recent studies have shown that BF affects traits relating to important factors including meat quality, reproduction, and growth rate [8,9]. Genetic analysis of BF has revealed quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with ADIPOQ, LEPR, ELOVL6, and FAT1 genes in wild boar Sus scrofa chromosomes (SSC) 2, SSC 6, SSC 8, SSC 13, and SSC 17 to identify genes that contribute to metabolism in pigs [10,11,12,13,14]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion