Transcriptomic analysis of Rongchang pig brains and livers

Recent developments in high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) technology have had a dramatic impact on our comprehension of the structure and expression profiles of the mammalian transcriptome. This study performed transcriptome analysis of Rongchang pig brains and livers using deep RNA-seq technology to offer insights into potential swine genetic improvements, in addition to examining the use of the Rongchang pig as a biomedical model.By sequencing the mRNA of two extreme tissues, brains and livers, a total of 8.6 Gb of sequencing was obtained, with 91% resulting in clean reads, with approximately 43 million reads from the brain and 44 million reads from the liver samples. This analysis revealed tissue specificity through the identification of 5,575 and 4,600 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in brains and livers respectively. Functional analysis of the differentially expressed genes showed that the top ten functional pathways with highly enriched gene expression in brains were associated with nerves, while in livers the pathways were predominantly related to metabolism. Furthermore, 83 neuropeptide gene transcripts, 69 neuropeptide receptor gene transcripts, 10 pro-neuropeptide convertase gene transcripts, 12 insulin-like growth factors binding protein gene transcripts, and other neuropeptide related protein gene transcripts were identified, to reveal different expression profiles in brain and liver samples. In this study, major characteristics of the transcriptional profiles of Rongchang pig brains and livers were present. Overall, our data provides useful information for future research pertaining to swine livestock and biomedical research. Overall design: Transcriptional profiles of Rongchang pig brains and livers were generated by deep sequencing, using Illumina Hiseq 2000.