Transcriptomic Analysis Provides Novel Insights into Heat Stress Responses in Sheep

Self Cite

Body weight is an important economic trait for sheep and it is vital for their successful production and breeding. Therefore, identifying the genomic regions and biological pathways that contribute to understanding variability in body weight traits is significant for selection purposes. In this study, the genome-wide associations of birth, weaning, yearling, and adult weights of 460 fine-wool sheep were determined using resequencing technology. The results showed that 113 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) reached the genome-wide significance levels for the four body weight traits and 30 genes were annotated effectively, including AADACL3, VGF, NPC1, and SERPINA12. The genes annotated by these SNPs significantly enriched 78 gene ontology terms and 25 signaling pathways, and were found to mainly participate in skeletal muscle development and lipid metabolism. These genes can be used as candidate genes for body weight in sheep, and provide useful information for the production and genomic selection of Chinese fine-wool sheep.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Genome-Wide Association Study of Body Weight Traits in Chinese Fine-Wool Sheep

Yuan

et al. 2020

Self Cite

“…Savitha et al [45] suggested a higher expression of TLR3, TLR3, TLR7, TLR8 and TLR9 as reliable immunological markers for the indication of the severity of heat stress in goats. Higher expression of interleukin type 1 receptors (IL1R1, IL1R2) and heat shock-related 70-kDa protein 2 (HSPA2) are also seen in heat-stressed sheep, suggesting that these genes also play an important role in the immunological responses [46].…”

Section: Thermoregulatory Mechanisms In Small Ruminantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience of Small Ruminants to Climate Change and Increased Environmental Temperature: A Review

Joy

Dunshea

Leury

et al. 2020

138

Climate change is a major global threat to the sustainability of livestock systems. Climatic factors such as ambient temperature, relative humidity, direct and indirect solar radiation and wind speed influence feed and water availability, fodder quality and disease occurrence, with production being most efficient in optimal environmental conditions. Among these climatic variables, ambient temperature fluctuations have the most impact on livestock production and animal welfare. Continuous exposure of the animals to heat stress compromises growth, milk and meat production and reproduction. The capacity of an animal to mitigate effects of increased environmental temperature, without progressing into stress response, differs within and between species. Comparatively, small ruminants are better adapted to hot environments than large ruminants and have better ability to survive, produce and reproduce in harsh climatic regions. Nevertheless, the physiological and behavioral changes in response to hot environments affect small ruminant production. It has been found that tropical breeds are more adaptive to hot climates than high-producing temperate breeds. The growing body of knowledge on the negative impact of heat stress on small ruminant production and welfare will assist in the development of suitable strategies to mitigate heat stress. Selection of thermotolerant breeds, through identification of genetic traits for adaption to extreme environmental conditions (high temperature, feed scarcity, water scarcity), is a viable strategy to combat climate change and minimize the impact on small ruminant production and welfare. This review highlights such adaption within and among different breeds of small ruminants challenged by heat stress.

“…Heat stress could lead to enormous economic loss in rabbit industry by decreasing feed intake and increasing mortality rate [19,20]. Transcriptome studies have been widely used to explore the underlying molecular basis of heat resistance in animals, such as the cow [2], sheep [8], chicken [3], and duck [6]. In the current study, we artificially induced heat stress condition in rabbit, by which the global gene expression profiles have been studied.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Generally, R 2 > 0.8 was considered suitable. For exploring gene expression profile in each sample, all the genes were categorized into five groups based on their FPKM values: very low expression gene (0-1), low expression gene (1-3), medium expression gene (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15), high expression gene (15-60), and extremely high expression gene (>60).…”

Section: Analysis Of Differentially Expressed Genesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liver Transcriptome Changes of Hyla Rabbit in Response to Chronic Heat Stress

Yang

Chen

et al. 2019

Simple Summary: It has been widely acknowledged in farm animals that environmental heat stress would have comprehensive influences on many kinds of physiological aspects, including the metabolic characteristics, production performances, welfare concerns, etc. The rabbit is a small herbivore and needs to regulate the body temperature in a fine mechanism. Little is known, however, about the genes and pathways that are involved in the regulatory responses under chronic heat stress conditions. In the present study, we investigated the liver transcriptome changes in response to chronic heat stress for Hyla rabbit, that is a commercial meat breed recently introduced into China. We successfully revealed the differentially expressed genes that were significantly enriched in heat stress related biological processes. The results would help us for better understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying physiological responses against heat stress in rabbits.Abstract: Rabbit is an economically important farm animal in China and also is a widely used animal model in biological researches. Rabbits are very sensitive to the environmental conditions, therefore we investigated the liver transcriptome changes in response to chronic heat stress in the present study. Six Hyla rabbits were randomly divided into two groups: chronic heat stress (HS) and controls without heat stress (CN). Six RNA-Seq libraries totally yielded 380 million clean reads after the quality filtering. Approximately 85.07% of reads were mapped to the reference genome. After assembling transcripts and quantifying gene expression levels, we detected 51 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between HS and CN groups with thresholds of the adjusted p-value < 0.05 and |log2(FoldChange)| > 1. Among them, 33 and 18 genes were upregulated and downregulated, respectively. Gene ontology analyses further revealed that these DEGs were mainly associated with metabolism of lipids, thyroid hormone metabolic process, and cellular modified amino acid catabolic process. The upregulated ACACB, ACLY, LSS, and CYP7A1 genes were found to be inter-related through biological processes of thioester biosynthetic process, acyl-CoA biosynthetic process, acetyl-CoA metabolic process, and others. Six DEGs were further validated by quantitative real-time PCR analysis. The results revealed the candidate genes and biological processes that will potentially be considered as important regulatory factors involved in the heat stress response in rabbits.