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Skin transcriptomic analysis reveals candidate genes and pathways associated with thermotolerance in hair sheep

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Abstract

The skin plays an important role in thermoregulation. Identification of genes on the skin that contribute to increased heat tolerance can be used to select animals with the best performance in warm environments. Our objective was to identify candidate genes associated with the heat stress response in the skin of Santa Ines sheep. A group of 80 sheep assessed for thermotolerance was kept in a climatic chamber for 8 days at a stress level temperature of 36 °C (10 am to 04 pm) and a maintenance temperature of 28 °C (04 pm to 10 am). Two divergent groups, with seven animals each, were formed after ranking them by thermotolerance using rectal temperature. From skin biopsy samples, total RNA was extracted, quantified, and used for RNA-seq analysis. 15,989 genes were expressed in sheep skin samples, of which 4 genes were differentially expressed (DE; FDR < 0.05) and 11 DE (FDR 0.05–0.177) between the two divergent groups. These genes are involved in cellular protection against stress (HSPA1A and HSPA6), ribosome assembly (28S, 18S, and 5S ribosomal RNA), and immune response (IGHG4, GNLY, CXCL1, CAPN14, and SAA-4). The candidate genes and main pathways related to heat tolerance in Santa Ines sheep require further investigation to understand their response to heat stress in different climatic conditions and under solar radiation. It is essential to verify whether these genes and pathways are present in different breeds and to understand the relationship between heat stress and other genes identified in this study.

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Funding

This work was supported by FAPESP (grant number 2019/12604–4; fellowship number 2019/22226–7 and 2021/07178–6) and by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) (Financial Code 001), and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Financial Code 444874/2020–8), Brazil.

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Contributions

CGT: conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing — original draft, writing — review and editing, project administration, and funding acquisition. MHAP: conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing — original draft, writing — review and editing, and supervision. HF: conceptualization and writing — original draft. KKSD: investigation. FJN: formal analysis, and writing — original draft. GBM: formal analysis and writing — original draft. MDP: writing — original draft and writing — review and editing. RM: writing — review and editing. LLC: writing — original draft.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristiane Gonçalves Titto.

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Ethics approval

The experiment was approved by the Ethics Committee on Animal Experimentation (CEUA/FZEA/USP Declaration 7498130919), considering the legal and ethical issues of the interventions performed.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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de Andrade Pantoja, M.H., Poleti, M.D., de Novais, F.J. et al. Skin transcriptomic analysis reveals candidate genes and pathways associated with thermotolerance in hair sheep. Int J Biometeorol 68, 435–444 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-023-02602-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-023-02602-4

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