Chinese local goose and mouse fatty liver model for NALFD

Fat deposition in the liver is a characteristic of geese and mouse that are controlled by multiple genes. However, little is known about the roles of nuclear architecture during the fat deposition in geese. In this proposal, we focus on the key issue of chromatin architecture reorganization in the nuclei of goose liver cells and mouse goose liver cells and aim to explore the highly dynamic chromatin architecture reorganization-mediated transcription that occurs during fat deposition. We aim to generate a high-resolution map of the 3D chromatin interactome during the fat deposition in goose liver and mouse liver using HiC, RNAseq, and Chipseq methods. We will focus on the analyses of chromatin contact maps at various resolutions, which have previously revealed principles of hierarchical genome architecture, spanning chromosome territories, compartments, and topologically-associating domains to contact domains, loops, and other important contacts mediated by cis-regulatory elements. With the functional evaluation of the specific long-range sequence interactions that vary during fat deposition, we envision that our discoveries will provide new information for the regulation of adipose-associated gene expression in the 3D genome. 3D fluorescence in situ hybridization will be employed to detect chromatin architecture reorganization in the nucleus and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein technology will investigate gene function in hepatocytes. Studies of chromatin architecture reorganization in hepatocytes may also help uncover the molecular basis that underlies economic traits in geese and mouse. This will be an important step towards maximizing the economic benefits of producing high-quality goose products for human society.