Small non-coding RNA transcriptome of four high-altitude vertebrates and their low-altitude relatives

Purpose: The goal of this study was to compare the microRNA transcriptomes of four high-altitude vertebrates and their low-altitude relatives for six organs (heart,liver,spleen,lung,kidney and muscle). Methods: Three adult females for each population of the five species from distinct altitudes (600 m, 2000 m, and 3000 m) were humanely killed to ameliorate suffering. A piece of tissue fragments from six organs including heart, liver, spleen, lung, kidney and skeletal muscle(longissimus muscle for pig, cattle, yak and sheep, and pectoral muscle for chicken) were used to extract total RNA. Small RNA libraries were constructed using the Illumina TruSeq Small RNA Sample Prep kit and sequenced on the Illumina HiSeq 2500. The raw data were submitted to miRDeep2.0 to detect miRNAs for each species with default parameters. Results: we detected 2,036 mature miRNAs in five species and identified 49 orthologues among vertebrate, 111 orthologues in artiodactyla and 171 orthologues in ruminant . Conclusions: We identified comparable numbers of miRNAs in each species. Six organs (heart,liver,spleen,lung,kidney and muscle) miRNA profiles of four high-altitude vertebrates and their low-altitude relatives were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate using Illumina Hiseq2500 .