title: Discovery of potential piRNAs from next generation sequences of the sexually mature porcine testes.
abstract: Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), a new class of small RNAs discovered from mammalian testes, are involved in transcriptional silencing of retrotransposons and other genetic elements in germ line cells. In order to identify a full transcriptome set of piRNAs expressed in the sexually mature porcine testes, small RNA fractions were extracted and were subjected to a Solexa deep sequencing. We cloned 6,913,561 clean reads of Sus Scrofa small RNAs (18-30 nt) and performed functional characterization. Sus Scrofa small RNAs showed a bimodal length distribution with two peaks at 21 nt and 29 nt. Then from 938,328 deep-sequenced small RNAs (26-30 nt), 375,195 piRNAs were identified by a k-mer scheme and 326 piRNAs were identified by homology searches. All piRNAs predicted by the k-mer scheme were then mapped to swine genome by Short Oligonucleotide Analysis Package (SOAP), and 81.61% of all uniquely mapping piRNAs (197,673) were located to 1124 defined genomic regions (5.85 Mb). Within these regions, 536 and 501 piRNA clusters generally distributed across only minus or plus genomic strand, 48 piRNA clusters distributed on two strands but in a divergent manner, and 39 piRNA clusters distributed on two strands in an overlapping manner. Furthermore, expression pattern of 7 piRNAs identified by homology searches showed 5 piRNAs displayed a ubiquitous expression pattern, although 2 piRNAs were specifically expressed in the testes. Overall, our results provide new information of porcine piRNAs and their specific expression pattern in porcine testes suggests that piRNAs have a role in regulating spermatogenesis.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Pig Genetics and Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lei
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Keya
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Lifan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Xuanyan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Siwen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Changyan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: Yuanzhu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiong
authors.forename: Fenge
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D016678:Genome; D008297:Male; D034741:RNA, Small Interfering / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012984:Software; D013091:Spermatogenesis / Q000235:genetics*; D013552:Swine / Q000235:genetics*; D013737:Testis / Q000502:physiology*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D034741:RNA, Small Interfering