Identification of potential candidate genes for the Huoyan trait in developing Wulong goose embryos by transcriptomic analysis

ABSTRACT

1. The Wulong goose is a Chinese breed and a source of high-quality meat and eggs. A characteristic of the Wulong goose is that a proportion of the birds do not have eyelids, known as the Huoyon trait.

2. Wulong geese exhibiting the Huoyan trait at embryonic stages of 9 days (E9), 12 days (E12) and 14 days (E14) were selected alongside those with normal eyelids for comprehensive transcriptome sequencing. Differentially expressed gene (DEG) and functional enrichment analyses were performed and finally, eight DEG were chosen to verify the accuracy of qPCR sequencing.

3. Overall, 466, 962 and 550 DEG were obtained from the three control groups, D9 vs. N9, D12 vs. N12 and D14 vs. N14, respectively, by differential analysis (p < 0.05). CDKN1C, CRH, CROCC and TYSND1 were significantly expressed in the three groups. Enrichment analysis revealed the enrichment of CROCC and TYSND1 in pathways of cell cycle process, endocytosis, microtubule-based process, microtubule organising centre organisation, protein processing and protein maturation. CDKN1C and CRH were enriched in the cell cycle and cAMP signalling pathway.

4. Some collagen family genes were detected among the DEGs, including COL3A1, COL4A5, COL4A2 and COL4A1. FREM1 and FREM2 genes were detected in both Huoyan and normal eyelids. There was a significant difference (p < 0.01) in FREM1 expression between ED9 and ED14 in female embryos, but this difference was not observed in male embryos.

KEYWORDS:

• Wulong geese
• eyelid
• embryonic development
• transcriptomics
• Huoyan trait

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

The authors XY wrote the manuscript and analytics. XY and LJJ designed the experiments. RPW and ZX collected the samples and sent them for testing. LZY, GJY and LR performed the visual analysis of the data. ZMX and ZSE conceived the idea. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All sequencing data are available through the NCBI Sequence Read Archive under accession number PRJNA1015366.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Shandong Agricultural Seed Project [Grant No. 2019LZGC019] and the Open Project of Liao Cheng University Animal Husbandry Discipline [Grants No. 31931210112 and 31946220718].