Comparative transcriptomic and proteomic analysis provides insight into the key genes involved in high-altitude adaptation in Tibetan pig (RNA-seq). Sus scrofa

In this study, RNA-seq technique was used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in cardiac muscle of the Tibetan pigs raised at highland (TH), Tibetan pigs raised at lowland (TL), Yorkshire pigs raised at highland (YH) and Yorkshire raised at lowland (YL). We obtained 551M clean reads and detected 18585 genes that were expressed in the eight heart samples. According to a standard of fold-change (FC>2 or FC <0.5) and difference significant (P<0.05), obtained 299, 169, 242 and 368 of significantly differentially expressed genes (DEGs) respectively in TH vs.YH, TH vs.TL, TL vs.YL and YH vs.YL. GO and pathways analysis for DEGs results showed enrichment in HIF-1 signaling pathway, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), cardiovascular development, immunity, DNA damage and other biological functions. Eight DEGs were randomly selected to validate the veracity of RNA-seq and using real-time PCR. The results showed that the expression corresponds to the trend in RNA-seq, hence the deep-sequencing methods were feasible and efficient. This study expanded the number of hypoxic-adaptation-related genes in pig and indicated that the expression patterns of hypoxia-related genes are significantly altered in the Tibetan pig. DEGs may play important roles in hypoxic adaptation after migration to hypoxic environments. Overall design: mRNA profiles of 6-month old Tibetan pigs raised at highland (TH), Tibetan pigs raised at lowland (TL), Yorkshire pigs raised at highland (YH) and Yorkshire raised at lowland (YL) were generated by deep sequencing, every pig breed has two replicates, using Hiseq 2000.