Epigenomic profiling indicates a role for DNA methylation in the postnatal liver and pancreas development

The giant pandas are specialized herbivores that belong to Carnivore. Of particular interest is how giant pandas obtain enough nutrition from low-nutrition and high-fiber bamboo with a typical Carnivore digestive tract. We have explored the gene expression changes of giant pandas from newborn to adult and found metabolism-related genes were markedly changed in response to physiological nutritional demand. However, how metabolic genes were activated during postnatal development was poorly understood. In this study, the DNA methylomes produced from the livers and pancreas of three different postnatal stages are used to study the role of DNA methylation in the regulation of metabolism-related genes, thereby providing new insight into the molecular mechanism underlying epigenetic regulation of nutrition utilization in giant pandas.