Transcriptome Analysis Of The Liver Of Arctic Fox Under High And Low Fat Nutrition Conditions

Studies have shown that Arctic foxes are tolerant to high-fat diets.However,the expression and function of differential genes related to fat metabolism and differential lncRNAs(Long non-coding RNAs)in liver tissues of Arctic foxes under high and low fat nutrition are still unclear.Therefore,this study aims to explore the differential expression and function of genes and lncRNAs,and to construct a regulatory network of lncRNA-mRNA,which plays an important role in analyzing the molecular mechanism of Arctic foxes’ tolerance to high fat diet.The results are as follows:(1)On the level of histomorphology: compared with the control group,the fresh liver of the experimental group showed slightly granularity,poor elasticity when pressed by fingers,and slightly yellow appearance color.The paraffin section of liver tissue stained with HE was made.It was observed that the structure of liver lobules in the experimental group was intact,the liver cells contained more fat granules,and there was a certain degree of fat diffusion phenomenon.(2)Transcriptome level:Hisat2 and Stringtie were used to compare and assemble the sequencing data,and DEseq2 software package in R language was used to screen the differentially expressed genes.A total of 1004 differentially expressed genes were screened out,among which 435 genes were up-regulated and 569 genes were down-regulated.Clusterprofiler software package in R language was used for enrichment analysis of differentially expressed genes,and it was found that some differentially expressed genes were enriched in items related to fat metabolism.(3)At the lncRNA level,software such as Cuffcompare,CPC2 and R language were used to screen and analyze the differential expression of lncRNAs,and 762 lncRNAs were screened out,among which 66 were differentially expressed,among which 21 were up-regulated and 45 were down-regulated.Potential target genes of differentially expressed lncRNAs were predicted by the regulation principle of CIS and TRANS,and 615 potential target genes of 66 differentially expressed lncRNAs were screened out.Through enrichment analysis of potential target genes,15 potential target genes related to fat metabolism were screened,and 42 lncRNAs co-expressed with them were constructed to construct lncRNA-mRNA regulatory network.Fluorescence quantitative PCR was used to verify the expression levels of 4 proteins and 2lncRNAs,which were consistent with the results of transcriptome sequencing.In summary,this study analyzed the RNA-seq data of liver tissues of Arctic foxes under high and low fat nutrition,studied the differential gene expression related to fat metabolism,screened some lncRNAs that may be related to fat metabolism and constructed lncRNA-mRNA regulatory network.This study provides a basis for understanding the molecular mechanism of arctic fox tolerance to high fat diet.