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Transcriptome analysis reveals that constant heat stress modifies the metabolism and structure of the porcine longissimus dorsi skeletal muscle

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Abstract

Exposure to high ambient temperatures is detrimental to pig rearing and porcine meat quality. Deep molecular sequencing allows for genomic characterization of porcine skeletal muscles and helps understand how the genomic landscape may impact meat quality. To this end, we performed mRNA-seq to molecularly dissect the impact of heat stress on porcine skeletal muscles, longissimus dorsi. Sixteen castrated, male DLY pigs [which are crossbreeds between Duroc (D) boars and Landrace (L) × Yorkshire (Y) sows, 79.0 ± 1.5 kg BW] were evenly split into two groups that were subjected to either control (CON) (22 °C; 55 % humidity) or constant heat stress (H30; 30 °C; 55 % humidity) conditions for 21 days. Seventy-eight genes were found to be differentially expressed, of which 37 were up-regulated and 41 were down-regulated owing to constant heat stress. We predicted 5247 unknown genes and 6108 novel transcribed units attributed to alternative splicing (AS) events in the skeletal muscle. Furthermore, 30,761 and 31,360 AS events were observed in the CON and H30 RNA-seq libraries, respectively. The differentially expressed genes in the porcine skeletal muscles were involved in glycolysis, lactate metabolism, lipid metabolism, cellular defense, and stress responses. Additionally, the expression levels of these genes were associated with variations in meat quality between the CON and H30 groups, indicating that heat stress modulated genes crucial to skeletal muscle development and metabolism. Our transcriptomic analysis provides valuable information for understanding the molecular mechanisms governing porcine skeletal muscle development. Such insights may lead to innovative strategies to improve meat quality of pigs under heat stress.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Novogene for excellent technical help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100193, China

    Yue Hao, Yuejin Feng, Peige Yang, Yanjun Cui, Jiru Liu, Chunhe Yang & Xianhong Gu

  2. College of Veterinary and Animal Science, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, 110866, China

    Jiru Liu

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  1. Yue Hao
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  2. Yuejin Feng
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Correspondence to Xianhong Gu.

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None of the authors declare any conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Animal procedures were conducted in accordance with the Guidelines for Experimental Animals as established by the Ministry of Science and Technology (Beijing, China). All animal protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) (Beijing, China).

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (National 973 Project: 2012CB124706), National Natural Science of China (31501961), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP-IAS07), and the Key Project in the National Science and Technology Pillar Program (2012BAD39B0202). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Additional information

Communicated by S. Hohmann.

Electronic supplementary material

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Table S1: Differentially expressed genes in H30 and CON groups (PDF 92 kb)

438_2016_1242_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Table S2: Gene Ontology (GO) assignments according to biological process, molecular function, and cellular component (PDF 132 kb)

Table S3: List of KEGG pathway categories (PDF 109 kb)

438_2016_1242_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

SuppleTable S4: Primers for real-time RT-PCR of 11 randomly selected, differentially expressed genesmentary material 4 (PDF 72 kb)

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Hao, Y., Feng, Y., Yang, P. et al. Transcriptome analysis reveals that constant heat stress modifies the metabolism and structure of the porcine longissimus dorsi skeletal muscle. Mol Genet Genomics 291, 2101–2115 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-016-1242-8

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