Screening of lncRNA profiles during intramuscular adipogenic differentiation in longissimus dorsi and semitendinosus muscles in pigs

Abstract

Intramuscular fat content is an important factor that determines meat quality in pigs. In recent years, epigenetic regulation has increasingly studied the physiological model of intramuscular fat. Although long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play essential roles in various biological processes, their role in intramuscular fat deposition in pigs remains largely unknown. In this study, intramuscular preadipocytes in the longissimus dorsi and semitendinosus of Large White pigs were isolated and induced into adipogenic differentiation in vitro. High-throughput RNA-seq was carried out to estimate the expression of lncRNAs at 0, 2 and 8 days post-differentiation. At this stage, 2135 lncRNAs were identified. KEGG analysis showed that the differentially expressed lncRNAs were common in pathways involved with adipogenesis and lipid metabolism. lnc_000368 was found to gradually increase during the adipogenic process. Reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction and a western blot revealed that the knockdown of lnc_000368 significantly repressed the expression of adipogenic genes and lipolytic genes. As a result, lipid accumulation in porcine intramuscular adipocytes was impaired by the silencing of lnc_000368. Overall, our study identified a genome-wide lncRNA profile related to porcine intramuscular fat deposition, and the results suggest that lnc_000368 is a potential target gene that might be targeted in pig breeding in the future.

Keywords:

• Pig
• intramuscular adipocyte
• lncRNA-seq
• adipogenic differentiation
• adipogenesis

Acknowledgments

The authors thanks all the projects for their financial support.

Disclosure statement

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

Author contributions

Yanru Yue was responsible for experimental design and thesis writing, Zihao Ge and Zhicheng Guo was responsible for cell culture, Yuhe Wang was responsible for part of the data analysis and Gongshe Yang, Shiduo Sun provided the experimental platform.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China [2021YFF1000602], the Program for Shaanxi Science & Technology [2023-CX-TD-57].