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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Animal Genomics and Improvement Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #304505
Title: Co-expression analysis of fetal weight-related genes in ovine skeletal muscle during mid and late fetal development stages

Author
item XU, LINGYANG - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item ZHAO, FUPING - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item REN, HANGXING - Chongqing University
item LI, LI - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item LU, JIAN - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item LIU, JIASEN - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item ZHANG, SHIFANG - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item Liu, Ge - George
item SONG, JIUZHOU - University Of Maryland
item ZHANG, LI - University Of Maryland
item WEI, CAIHONG - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences
item DU, LIXIN - Chinese Academy Of Agricultural Sciences

Submitted to: International Journal of Medical Sciences
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/16/2015
Publication Date: 9/11/2014
Citation: Xu, L., Zhao, F., Ren, H., Li, L., Lu, J., Liu, J., Zhang, S., Liu, G., Song, J., Zhang, L., Wei, C., Du, L. 2014. Co-expression analysis of fetal weight-related genes in ovine skeletal muscle during mid and late fetal development stages. International Journal of Medical Sciences. 10(9):1039-50.

Interpretive Summary: Muscle development and lipid metabolism play important roles in animal production. We performed serial comprehensive analysis of RNA expression in fetal muscles of two distinct sheep breeds. Our findings could provide potential valuable biomarkers for selection of body weight-related traits in sheep and other livestock. Farmers, Scientists, and policy planners who need to improve animal production based on genome-enable animal selection will benefit from this manuscript.

Technical Abstract: Muscle development and lipid metabolism play important roles during fetal development stages. The commercial Texel sheep are more muscular than the indigenous Ujumqin sheep which are fatter. We performed serial transcriptomics assays and systems biology analyses to investigate the dynamics of gene expression changes associated with fetal longissimus muscles during different fetal stages in these two sheep breeds. Totally, we identified 1472 differentially expressed genes during various fetal stages using time-series expression analysis. A systems biology approach, weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA), was used to detect modules of correlated genes among these 1472 genes. Dramatically different gene modules were identified in four merged datasets, corresponding to the mid fetal stage in Texel and Ujumqin sheep and the late fetal stage in Texel and Ujumqin sheep, respectively. We further detected gene modules significantly correlated with fetal weight, and constructed networks and pathways using genes with extreme positive or negative corelation values. In these gene modules, we identified hub genes like TADA3, LMNB1, TGF-ß3, EEF1A2, FGFR1, MYOZ1, FBP2 associated with fetal weight. Our findings could provide potential valuable biomarkers for selection of body weight-related traits in sheep and other livestock.