The miRNA profiling of goat CD49f-positive and negative testicular cells

Purpose: miRNAs, a member of the small RNA, play critical roles in the mammalian spermatogenesis. Spermatogonia was the foundation of spermatogenesis and valuable for the study of spermatogenesis. However, it is still not clear that the expression profiling of the miRNAs in spermatogonia of dairy goat. Methods: The CD49f was one of the surface markers for spermatogonia enrichment by MACS. Therefore, we used CD49f microbeads antibody to purify CD49f-positive and negative cells of dairy goat testicular cells by MACS (Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting), and then in-depth analyzed the miRNA expression in these cells using Illumina sequencing technology. Results: The results of miRNAs expression profiling in purified CD49f-positive and negative testicular cells showed that 933 were miRNAs upregulated in CD49f-positive cells and 916 were miRNAs upregulated in CD49f-negative cells with a 2-fold increase, respectively; some spermatogonial stem cells(SSCs) specific miRNAs and marker genes in testis had a higher level expression in CD49f-positive testicular cells, such as miR-221, miR-23a, miR-29b, miR-24, miR-29a, miR-199b, miR-199a, miR-27a, miR-21. Conclusions: our comparative miRNAome data provided some useful miRNAs profiling data of dairy goat spermatogonia cells and suggested CD49f could be used to enrich dairy goat spermatogonia-like cells, including SSCs. Overall design: miRNA profiles of goat CD49f-positive and negative testicular cells were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina GAIIx