Comprehensive transcriptional profiling of porcine liver aging

Aging is a major risk factor for the development of many diseases, and liver as the most important metabolic organ is significantly affected by aging. Earlier studies have shown that liver weight tends to increase and decrease with age in rodents and human, respectively. Intriguingly, the pig has a genomic structure, physiological and biochemical features similar to those of humans, and has been found to be a valuable model for studying human diseases. Moreover, the molecular mechanisms of large mammal’s liver aging in a comprehensive transcriptional level has been poorly understood. Therefore, the pig can be an ideal model animal to clearly and fully understand the molecular mechanism of human liver aging. We have identified many age-related genes in the porcine liver, GO annotation showed that up-regulated genes were mainly related to immune response, and the down-regulated genes were mainly involved in metabolism. Moreover, some lncRNAs and their target genes were also found differentially expressed during liver aging. In addition, we assessed the multi-group cooperative control relationships and constructed circRNA-miRNA co-expression networks during liver aging. Four healthy female Yana pigs (indigenous Chinese breed) were investigated, including two young sows (180-days-old) and two old sows (8-years-old). Here, we performed a high throughput RNA sequencing to evaluate the expression profiles of messenger RNA, long non-coding RNAs, micro RNAs, and circular RNAs during porcine liver aging process.