title: Genes regulating lipid and protein metabolism are highly expressed in mammary gland of lactating dairy goats.
abstract: Dairy goats serve as an important source of milk and also fulfill agricultural and economic roles in developing countries. Understanding the genetic background of goat mammary gland is important for research on the regulatory mechanisms controlling tissue function and the synthesis of milk components. We collected tissue at four different stages of goat mammary gland development and generated approximately 25 GB of data from Illumina de novo RNA sequencing. The combined reads were assembled into 51,361 unigenes, and approximately 60.07 % of the unigenes had homology to other proteins in the NCBI non-redundant protein database (NR). Functional classification through eukaryotic Ortholog Groups of Protein (KOG), gene ontology (GO), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) revealed that the unigenes from goat mammary glands are involved in a wide range of biological processes and metabolic pathways, including lipid metabolism and lactose metabolism. The results of qPCR revealed that genes encoding FABP3, FASN, SCD, PLIN2, whey proteins (LALBA and BLG), and caseins (CSN1S1, CSN1S2, CSN2 and CSN3) at 100 and 310 days postpartum increased significantly compared with the non-lactating period. In addition to their role in lipid and protein synthesis, the higher expression at 310 days postpartum could contribute to mammary cell turnover during pregnancy. In conclusion, this is the first study to characterize the complete transcriptome of goat mammary glands and constitutes a comprehensive genomic resource available for further studies of ruminant lactation.
authors.affiliation: Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Agriculture, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Hengbo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Jiangjiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Wenting
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.forename: Huaiping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Dawei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yuting
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Huifen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Kang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Juan J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Loor
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003612:Dairying; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D063990:Gene Ontology; D006041:Goats / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D007774:Lactation / Q000235:genetics*; D050356:Lipid Metabolism / Q000235:genetics*; D008321:Mammary Glands, Animal / Q000201:enzymology / Q000378:metabolism*; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D008894:Milk Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D008894:Milk Proteins