Genome-wide analysis of circular RNAs in prenatal and postnatal muscle of sheep

Abstract

// Cunyuan Li 1, * , Xiaoyue Li 1, * ,Yang Yao 1, * , Qiman Ma 1 , Wei Ni 1 , Xiangyu Zhang 1 , Yang Cao 1 , Wureli Hazi 2 , Dawei Wang 1 , Renzhe Quan 1 , Xiaoxu Hou 1 , Zhijin Liu 1 , Qianqian Zhan 1 , Li Liu 1 , Mengdan Zhang 1 , Shuting Yu 1 and Shengwei Hu 1 1 College of Life Sciences, Shihezi University, Shihezi, Xinjiang, 832003, China 2 College of Animal Science and Technology, Shihezi University, Shihezi, Xinjiang, 832003, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Wei Ni, email: niweiwonderful@sina.com Shengwei Hu, email: hushengwei@163.com Keywords: sheep, circRNAs, muscle, expression profiles, RNA-seq Received: June 05, 2017      Accepted: September 23, 2017      Published: October 12, 2017 ABSTRACT Circular RNAs (circRNAs), a type of non-coding RNA with circular structure, were generated by back splicing and widely expressed in animals and plants. Recent studies have shown that circRNAs extensively participate in cell proliferation, cell differentiation, cell autophagy and other biological processes. However, the role and expression of circRNAs in the development and growth of muscle have not been studied in sheep. In our study, we first used RNA-seq to study the circRNAs in prenatal and postnatal longissimus dorsi muscle of sheep. A total of 6113 circRNAs were detected from the RNA-seq data. Several circRNAs were identified using reverse transcription PCR, DNA sequencing and RNase R digestion experiments. The expression levels of several circRNAs in prenatal and postnatal muscle were confirmed by Real-Time RT-PCR. The gene ontology (GO) and KEGG enrichment analysis of the host gene of the circRNAs showed that these circRNAs were mainly involved in the growth and development of muscle related signaling pathways. These circRNAs might sponge microRNAs (miRNAs) in predicted circRNA-miRNA-mRNA networks. The circRNAs expression profiles in muscle provided an important reference for the study of circRNAs in sheep.