Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb 23:9:e10796.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.10796. eCollection 2021.

Evaluation of key miRNAs during early pregnancy in Kazakh horse using RNA sequencing

LingLing Liu  1 , Chao Fang  2 , YinZe Sun  1 , WuJun Liu  1
Affiliations

Evaluation of key miRNAs during early pregnancy in Kazakh horse using RNA sequencing

LingLing Liu et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Background: miRNA has an important role in cell differentiation, biological development, and physiology. Milk production is an important quantitative trait in livestock and miRNA plays a role in the amount of milk produced.

Methods: The role of regulatory miRNAs involved in equine milk production is not fully understood. We constructed two miRNA libraries for Kazakh horse milk production from higher-producing (H group) and lower-producing (L group) individuals, and used RNA-Seq technology to identify the differentially expressed miRNAs between the two milk phenotypes of Kazakh horses.

Results: A total of 341 known and 333 novel miRNAs were detected from the H and L groups, respectively. Eighty-three differentially expressed miRNAs were identified between the H and L group s, of which 32 were known miRNAs (27 were up-regulated, five were down-regulated) and 51 were novel miRNAs (nine were up-regulated, 42 were down-regulated). A total of 2,415 genes were identified. The Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses showed that these genes were annotated to mammary gland development, mammary gland morphogenesis, tissue development and PI3K-Akt signaling pathways, insulin signaling pathway and TGF-beta signaling pathway, among others. Five miRNAs (miR-199a-3p, miR143, miR145, miR221, miR486-5p) were identified as affecting horse milk production and these five miRNAs were validated using qRT-PCR.

Conclusions: We described a methodology for the transcriptome-wide profiling of miRNAs in milk, which may help the design of new intervention strategies to improve the milk yield of Kazakh horses.

Keywords: High-throughput sequencing; Kazakh horse; Milk yield; miRNAs.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Statistics of miRNA length distribution in H group and L group of horse libraries.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The differential miRNA expression profile in milk of Kazakh horse.
Figure 3
Figure 3. GO annotation analysis.
Figure 4
Figure 4. KEGG annotation analysis.
Figure 5
Figure 5. qRT-PCR validation of five miRNAs identified as differentially expressed by miRNA profiling.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Amaral MEC, Cunha DA, Anhê GF, Ueno M, Carneiro EM, Velloso LA, Bordin S, Boschero AC. Participation of prolactin receptors and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase and MAP kinase pathways in the increase in pancreatic islet mass and sensitivity to glucose during pregnancy. The Journal of Endocrinology. 2004;183:469–476. doi: 10.1677/joe.1.05547. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baek D, Villén J, Shin C, Camargo FD, Gygi SP, Bartel DP. The impact of microRNAs on protein output. Nature. 2008;455:64–71. doi: 10.1038/nature07242. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Basu M, Roy SS. Wnt/p-catenin pathway is regulated by PITX2 homeodomain protein and thus contributes to the proliferation of human ovarian adenocarcinoma cell. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 2013;288:4355–4367. doi: 10.1074/jbc.M112.409102. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Betel D, Wilson M, Gabow A, Marks DS, Sander C. The microRNA.org resource: targets and expression. Nucleic Acids Research. 2008;36:D149–D153. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkm995. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cao WT. Identification, selection and functional research of miRNAs in dairy Goat mammary gland. Xianyang: Northwest A & F University; 2015.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous (grant number 2019D01B14); the NSFC (No.31560620). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

LinkOut - more resources