Excessive fat deposition can cause chicken health problem, and affect production efficiency by causing great economic losses to the industry. However, the molecular underpinnings of the complex adiposity trait remain elusive. In the current study, we constructed and compared the gene co-expression networks on four transcriptome profiling datasets, from two chicken lines under divergent selection for abdominal fat contents, in an attempt to dissect network compositions underlying adipose tissue growth and development. After functional enrichment analysis, nine network modules important to adipogenesis were discovered to be involved in lipid metabolism, PPAR and insulin signaling pathways, and contained hub genes related to adipogenesis, cell cycle, inflammation, and protein synthesis. Moreover, after additional functional annotation and network module comparisons, common sub-modules of similar functionality for chicken fat deposition were identified for different chicken lines, apart from modules specific to each chicken line. We further validated the lysosome pathway, and found TFEB and its downstream target genes showed similar expression patterns along with chicken preadipocyte differentiation. Our findings could provide novel insights into the genetic basis of complex adiposity traits, as well as human obesity and related metabolic diseases.

The present study aimed to search for chicken abdominal fat deposition-related polymorphisms within RB1 and to provide functional evidence for significantly associated genetic variants. Association analyses showed that 11 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in intron 17 of RB1, were significantly associated with both abdominal fat weight (P < 0.05) and abdominal fat percentage (P < 0.05). Functional analysis revealed that the A allele of g.32828A>G repressed the transcriptional efficiency of RB1 in vitro, through binding nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-K B) and SRY-related HMG box protein 2 (SOX2). Furthermore, RB1 mRNA expression levels in the abdominal fat tissue of individuals with the A/A genotype of g.32828A>G were lower than those of individuals with the G/G genotype. Collectively, we propose that the intronic SNP g.32828A>G of RB1 is an obesity-associated variant that directly affects binding with NF-K B and SOX2, leading to changes in RB1 expression which in turn may influence chicken abdominal fat deposition.

Long noncoding RNAs are vital to a variety of biological and physiological processes through multiple modes of functional interaction with DNA, RNA, and proteins. In chickens, numerous lncRNAs were discovered to be important to growth or disease progression. However, the detailed molecular function and role of lncRNAs remain less explored. Here, we performed lncRNA sequencing on abdominal adipose tissues from broiler lines divergently selected for abdominal fat content, and significantly differentially expressed lncRNAs were found, including lncPRDM16, a divergently transcribed and conserved lncRNA near PRDM16. Full lengths of two transcripts of lncPRDM16 were obtained, and their genomic structures were compared. Expression dynamics of lncPRDM16 in different tissues and during preadipocyte proliferation and differentiation were profiled. Moreover, a 250-nucleotide sequence at 5′-end was found to be inevitable to the function of lncPRDM16 in inhibiting preadipocyte proliferation and regulating the promoter activities of both lncPRDM16 and PRDM16. Taken together, we identified the 5′-end functional elements of lncPRDM16 and their potential importance in inhibiting preadipocyte proliferation. Our findings provide the foundation for further exploration of lncPRDM16 function and potential improvement of chicken muscle quality.