Characterization of Sheep Milk Extracellular Vesicle-miRNA by Sequencing and Comparison with Cow milk

Milk can mediate maternal-neonatal signal transmission by the bioactive component-extracellular vesicles (EVs), which select specific types of miRNA to encapsulate. The miRNA profiling of sheep milk EVs was characterized by sequencing and compared with that of cow milk. Sheep milk EVs contained various small RNAs, including tRNA, Cis-regulatory element, rRNA, snRNA, other Rfam RNA, and miRNA, which held about 36% of all the small RNAs. Totally 84 types of miRNAs were annotated with Ovis aries by miRBase (version 22.0) in sheep milk EVs, with 75 shared types of miRNAs in all samples. Fourteen sheep milk EV-miRNAs in the top 20, occupying 98% of the total expression, were immune-related. Overall design: The miRNA profiling of sheep milk EVs was characterized by sequencing and compared with that of cow milk in our prior study.