Integrated study of the circRNA, lncRNA and mRNA networks in testicular heat exposure

The World Health Organization has recognized testicular function with temperature dependence. Testicular heat exposure caused by occupational factors, lifestyle and clinical disease, etc., can lead to different degrees of reproductive obstacles. The aim of this study is to reveal the transcriptional regulatory network and their potential crucial roles in testicular heat exposure. After passing quality control, the high throughput sequencing data of mouse testicular tissue for scrotum heat exposure and control group were carried out various analyses including differentially expressed transcriptome exploration, Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and network regulation. Differential transcriptome expression analysis revealed that 172 circRNA (91 upregulation and 81 downregulation), 465 lncRNA (96 upregulation and 369 downregulation) and 2721 mRNA (2003 upregulation and 718 downregulation) were identified as significant differential expression in the mouse testicular tissue of heat exposure compared with control group using the cut-off of log2fold change >= 0.585, p value <= 0.05 and q value <= 1.00. Through GO term analysis, differentially expressed lncRNA and mRNA may play important functions in negative regulation of cellular process [GO:0048523], meiotic cell cycle [GO:0051321], cytoplasm [GO:0005737], membrane raft [GO:0045121], amide binding [GO:0033218], extracellular matrix binding [GO: 0050840]. KEGG pathway analysis of differentially expressed lncRNA and mRNA can be classified into MAPK signaling [mmu04010], purine metabolism [mmu00230], homologous recombination [mmu03440], RNA transport [mmu03013], nod-like receptor signaling pathway [mmu04621]. This research provides high throughput sequencing data of transcriptome in testicular heat exposure model and lays the foundation for further study on the circRNA and lncRNA in male reproductive diseases related to elevated testicular temperature. Mice were first anesthetized by 5% chloral hydrate with 0.01 ml/g, and then the scrotum were placed in water bath for 25 minutes at 33 °C in the control group or for 25 minutes at 43 °C in the high temperature group. The mice were sacrificed after 7 days, testes (3 testes of 33 °C treament and 3 testes of 43 °C treament) were separated from mouse body and used for experiments of histological detection and RNA isolation.