DNA methylation, microRNA expression profiles and their relationships with transcriptome in grass-fed and grain-fed Angus Cattle rumen tissue

Abstract

Rumen is a critical organ for supplying nutrients for the growth and production of bovine, which might function differently under grass-fed and grain-fed regimens considering the association of gene expression, DNA methylation, and microRNA expression. The objective of this study was to explore the potential mechanism influencing rumen function of grass-fed and grain-fed animals. Methylated DNA binding domain sequencing (MBD-Seq) and microRNA-Seq were respectively utilized to detect the DNA methylation and microRNA expression in rumen tissue of grass-fed and grain-fed Angus cattle. Integration analysis revealed that the expression of the differentially expressed genes ADAMTS3 and ENPP3 was correlated with the methylation abundance of the corresponding DMRs inside these two genes, and these two genes were reported to be respectively involved in biosynthesis and regulation of glycosyltransferase activity; the differentially expressed microRNA bta-mir-122 was predicted to possibly target the differentially expressed genes OCLN and RBM47, potentially affecting the rumen function; the microRNA bta-mir-655 was exclusively detected in grain-fed group; its targets were involved in the significantly enriched insulin and TGF-beta signaling pathways, which might worked together to regulate the function of rumen, resulting in different characteristics between grass-fed and grain-fed cattle.Collectively, our results provided insights into understanding the mechanisms determining rumen function and unraveled the biological basis underlying the economic traits to improve the productivity of animals.

Computational Network Analysis Identifies Evolutionarily Conserved miRNA Gene Interactions Potentially Regulating Immune Response in Bovine Trypanosomosis

“…miRNAs have also been implicated in the regulation of immune functions in different cell types, for example neutrophil senescence and naïve mouse B cells have been reported to be regulated by repertoires of miRNAs (Ward et al, 2011; Bronevetsky et al, 2013; Aalaei-Andabili and Rezaei, 2016; Kangas et al, 2017). While there are numerous miRNAs abundantly expressed in bovine tissues and the entire genome, there are very few studies elucidating their regulatory role in bovine immunity (Coutinho et al, 2007; Jin et al, 2009; Xu et al, 2009; Hanif et al, 2018; Li et al, 2019). MicroRNAs therefore, will play important and unique roles during immune response, including modification of gene expression during bovine trypanosomosis.…”