scholarly journals Identification of Circular RNAs in Hypothalamus of Gilts during the Onset of Puberty

Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Qingnan Li ◽  
Xiangchun Pan ◽  
Nian Li ◽  
Wentao Gong ◽  
Yaosheng Chen ◽  
...  

The disorders of puberty have shown negative outcomes on health of mammals, and the hypothalamus is thought to be the main regulator of puberty by releasing GnRH. Many studies show that the circular RNAs (circRNAs) might be implicated in the timing of puberty in mammals. However, the circRNAs in the hypothalamus of gilts have not been explored. To profile the changes and biological functions of circRNAs in the hypothalamus during the onset of puberty, RNA-seq was utilized to establish pre-, in-, and post-pubertal hypothalamic circRNAs profiles. In this study, the functions of hypothalamic circRNAs were enriched in the signaling pathway of neurotrophin, progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation, oocyte meiosis, insulin, ErbB, and mTOR, which have been highly suggested to be involved in the timing of puberty. Furthermore, 53 circRNAs were identified to be putative hypothalamus-specific expressed circRNAs, and some of them were exclusively expressed in the one of three pubertal stages. Moreover, 22 differentially expressed circRNAs were identified and chosen to construct the circRNA-miRNA-gene network. Moreover, 10 circRNAs were found to be driven by six puberty-related genes (ESR1, NF1, APP, ENPP2, ARNT, and DICER1). Subsequently, the expression changes of several circRNAs were confirmed by RT-qPCR. Collectively, the preliminary results of hypothalamic circRNAs provided useful information for the investigation of the molecular mechanism for the timing of puberty in gilts.

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (D1) ◽  
pp. D1251-D1258
Author(s):  
Yue Gao ◽  
Shipeng Shang ◽  
Shuang Guo ◽  
Xin Li ◽  
Hanxiao Zhou ◽  
...  

Abstract An updated Lnc2Cancer 3.0 (http://www.bio-bigdata.net/lnc2cancer or http://bio-bigdata.hrbmu.edu.cn/lnc2cancer) database, which includes comprehensive data on experimentally supported long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs) associated with human cancers. In addition, web tools for analyzing lncRNA expression by high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) are described. Lnc2Cancer 3.0 was updated with several new features, including (i) Increased cancer-associated lncRNA entries over the previous version. The current release includes 9254 lncRNA-cancer associations, with 2659 lncRNAs and 216 cancer subtypes. (ii) Newly adding 1049 experimentally supported circRNA-cancer associations, with 743 circRNAs and 70 cancer subtypes. (iii) Experimentally supported regulatory mechanisms of cancer-related lncRNAs and circRNAs, involving microRNAs, transcription factors (TF), genetic variants, methylation and enhancers were included. (iv) Appending experimentally supported biological functions of cancer-related lncRNAs and circRNAs including cell growth, apoptosis, autophagy, epithelial mesenchymal transformation (EMT), immunity and coding ability. (v) Experimentally supported clinical relevance of cancer-related lncRNAs and circRNAs in metastasis, recurrence, circulation, drug resistance, and prognosis was included. Additionally, two flexible online tools, including RNA-seq and scRNA-seq web tools, were developed to enable fast and customizable analysis and visualization of lncRNAs in cancers. Lnc2Cancer 3.0 is a valuable resource for elucidating the associations between lncRNA, circRNA and cancer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangchun Pan ◽  
Qingnan Li ◽  
Danxia Chen ◽  
Wentao Gong ◽  
Nian Li ◽  
...  

The timing of puberty in mammals marks the point at which reproduction becomes possible. Abnormalities in the timing of puberty may exert a series of negative effects on subsequent health outcomes. Alternative splicing (AS) has not only emerged as a significant factor in the transcription of genes but it is also reported to play a role in the timing of puberty. However, to date, the changes and dynamics of AS during the onset of puberty is extremely seldom explored. In the present study, we used gilts as a research model to investigated the dynamics of AS and differentially expressed AS (DEAS) events within the hypothalamus–pituitary–ovary (HPO) axis across pre-, in-, and post-puberty. We detected 3,390, 6,098, and 9,085 DEAS events in the hypothalamus, pituitary, and ovary when compared across pre-, in-, and post-pubertal stages, respectively. Within the entire HPO axis, we also identified 22,889, 22,857, and 21,055 DEAS events in the pre-, in-, and post-pubertal stages, respectively. Further analysis revealed that the differentially spliced genes (DSGs) associated with staged DEAS events were likely to be enriched in the oxytocin signaling pathway, thyroid hormone signaling pathway, GnRH signaling pathway, and oocyte meiosis signaling pathway. The DSGs associated with DEAS events across the entire HPO axis were enriched in endocytosis signaling pathway, the MAPK signaling pathway, and the Rap1 signaling pathway. Moreover. the ASs of TAC1, TACR3, CYP19A1, ESR1, ESRRA, and FSHR were likely to regulate the functions of the certain HPO tissues during the onset of puberty. Collectively, the AS dynamics and DEAS events were comprehensively profiled in hypothalamus, pituitary, and ovary across the pre-, in-, and post-pubertal stages in pigs. These findings may enhance our knowledge of how puberty is regulated by AS and shed new light on the molecular mechanisms underlying the timing of puberty in mammals.


BMC Genomics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiangchun Pan ◽  
Wentao Gong ◽  
Yingting He ◽  
Nian Li ◽  
Hao Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background In mammals, the ovary is the essential system of female reproduction for the onset of puberty, and the abnormal puberty has negative outcomes on health. CircRNA is a non-coding RNA produced by non-canonical alternative splicing (AS). Several studies have reported that circRNA is involved in the gene regulation and plays an important role in some human diseases. However, the contribution of circRNA has received little known within the onset of puberty in ovary. Results Here, the profiles of ovarian circRNAs across pre-, in- and post-pubertal stages were established by RNA-sEq. In total, 972 circRNAs were identified, including 631 stage-specific circRNAs and 8 tissue-specific circRNAs. The biological functions of parental genes of circRNAs were enriched in steroid biosynthesis, autophagy-animal, MAPK signaling pathway, progesterone-mediated oocyte maturation and ras signaling pathway. Moreover, 5 circRNAs derived from 4 puberty-related genes (ESR1, JAK2, NF1 and ARNT) were found in this study. The A3SS events were the most alternative splicing, but IR events were likely to be arose in post-pubertal ovaries. Besides, the circRNA-miRNA-gene networks were explored for 10 differentially expressed circRNAs. Furthermore, the head-to-tail exon as well as the expressions of 10 circRNAs were validated by the divergent RT-qPCR and sanger sequencing. Conclusions In summary, the profiles of ovarian circRNAs were provided during pubertal transition in gilts, and these results provided useful information for the investigation on the onset of puberty at the ovarian-circRNAs-level in mammals.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zelin Liu ◽  
Huiru Ding ◽  
Jianqi She ◽  
Chunhua Chen ◽  
Weiguang Zhang ◽  
...  

AbstractCircular RNAs (circRNAs) are involved in various biological processes and in disease pathogenesis. However, only a small number of functional circRNAs have been identified among hundreds of thousands of circRNA species, partly because most current methods are based on circular junction counts and overlook the fact that circRNA is formed from the host gene by back-splicing (BS). To distinguish between expression originating from BS and that from the host gene, we present DEBKS, a software program to streamline the discovery of differential BS between two rRNA-depleted RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) sample groups. By applying real and simulated data and employing RT-qPCR for validation, we demonstrate that DEBKS is efficient and accurate in detecting circRNAs with differential BS events between paired and unpaired sample groups. DEBKS is available at https://github.com/yangence/DEBKS as open-source software.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jie Cui ◽  
Zexi Lv ◽  
Fangzhou Teng ◽  
La Yi ◽  
Weifeng Tang ◽  
...  

Airway remodeling is one of the typical pathological characteristics of asthma, while the structural changes of the airways in asthma are complex, which impedes the development of novel asthma targeted therapy. Our previous study had shown that Bu-Shen-Yi-Qi formula (BSYQF) could ameliorate airway remodeling in chronic asthmatic mice by modulating airway inflammation and oxidative stress in the lung. In this study, we analysed the lung transcriptome of control mice and asthmatic mouse model with/without BSYQF treatment. Using RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis, we found that 264/1746 (15.1%) of transcripts showing abnormal expression in asthmatic mice were reverted back to completely or partially normal levels by BSYQF treatment. Additionally, based on previous results, we identified 21 differential expression genes (DEGs) with fold changes (FC) > (±) 2.0 related to inflammatory, oxidative stress, mitochondria, PI3K/AKT, and MAPK signal pathways which may play important roles in the mechanism of the anti-remodeling effect of BSYQF treatment. Through inputting 21 DEGs into the IPA database to construct a gene network, we inferred Adipoq, SPP1, and TNC which were located at critical nodes in the network may be key regulators of BSYQF's anti-remodeling effect. In addition, the quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) result for the selected four DEGs matched those of the RNA-seq analysis. Our results provide a preliminary clue to the molecular mechanism of the anti-remodeling effect of BSYQF in asthma.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyuan Shen ◽  
Huimin Zhen ◽  
Lu Li ◽  
Yuting Zhang ◽  
Jiqing Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of non-coding RNA that play crucial roles in the development of skeletal muscle. However, little is known about the role of circRNAs in caprine skeletal muscle. In this study, the muscle fiber size and expression profiles of circRNAs were compared in Longissimus dorsi muscle of Liaoning cashmere (LC) goats and Ziwuling black (ZB) goats with significant phenotypic differences in meat production performance, using hematoxylin and eosin staining and RNA-Seq, respectively.Results: The muscle fiber size in LC goats were larger than those in ZB goats (P < 0.05). A total of 10,875 circRNAs were identified and 214 of these were differentially expressed between the two caprine breeds. The authentication and expression levels of 20 circRNAs were confirmed using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and DNA sequencing. The parent genes of differentially expressed circRNAs were mainly enriched in connective tissue development, Rap1, cGMP-PKG, cAMP and Ras signaling pathway. Some miRNAs reportedly associated with skeletal muscle development and intramuscular fat deposition would be targeted by several differentially expressed circRNAs and the most highly expressed circRNA (circ_001086).Conclusion: These results provide an improved understanding of the functions of circRNAs in skeletal muscle development of goats.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongbin Wang ◽  
Zhenfeng Jiang ◽  
Zhenxiang Li ◽  
Yuanling Zhao ◽  
Weiwei Tan ◽  
...  

Background. VQ proteins, the plant-specific transcription factors, are involved in the regulation of plant growth, development, and stress responses; however, few articles systematic reported VQ genes in the soybean. Methods. In total, we identified 75 GmVQ genes, which were classified into 7 groups (Ⅰ-Ⅶ). Conserved domain analysis indicated that VQ gene family members all contained the VQ domains. The VQ genes from the same evolutionary branches of soybean shared similar motifs and structures. Promoter analysis revealed cis-elements related to stress responses, phytohormone responses and controlling physical and reproductive growth. Based on the RNA-seq and qRT-PCR analysis, GmVQ genes were expressed in nine tissues suggested their putative function in many aspects of plant growth and development, and response to stresses in Glycine max. Results. The present study provided basic information for further analysis of the biological functions of GmVQ proteins in various development processes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yutao Huang ◽  
Zijian Jiang ◽  
Xiangyu Gao ◽  
Peng Luo ◽  
Xiaofan Jiang

Armadillo repeat-containing proteins (ARMCs) are widely distributed in eukaryotes and have important influences on cell adhesion, signal transduction, mitochondrial function regulation, tumorigenesis, and other processes. These proteins share a similar domain consisting of tandem repeats approximately 42 amino acids in length, and this domain constitutes a substantial platform for the binding between ARMCs and other proteins. An ARMC subfamily, including ARMC1∼10, ARMC12, and ARMCX1∼6, has received increasing attention. These proteins may have many terminal regions and play a critical role in various diseases. On the one hand, based on their similar central domain of tandem repeats, this ARMC subfamily may function similarly to other ARMCs. On the other hand, the unique domains on their terminals may cause these proteins to have different functions. Here, we focus on the ARMC subfamily (ARMC1∼10, ARMC12, and ARMCX1∼6), which is relatively conserved in vertebrates and highly conserved in mammals, particularly primates. We review the structures, biological functions, evolutions, interactions, and related diseases of the ARMC subfamily, which involve more than 30 diseases and 40 bypasses, including interactions and relationships between more than 100 proteins and signaling molecules. We look forward to obtaining a clearer understanding of the ARMC subfamily to facilitate further in-depth research and treatment of related diseases.


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