Authors : Ya Tan, Jideng Ma, Yingkai Liu, Keren Long, Liujun He, Xuewei Li and Li Zhu
Abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding RNAs that negatively regulate gene expression. Compelling evidences have demonstrated the important roles of miRNAs in muscle proliferation, differentiation and development processes. Cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle (longissimus dorsi muscle and psoas major muscle) are both striated muscles which perform different functions in vivo. However, little is known about the differences of miRNA expression pattern between these distinct muscles. In this study, researchers applied a deep sequencing approach to identify the miRNA transcriptomes between cardiac and skeletal muscles. Three sequencing libraries were constructed from three 210 days old pigs, a total of 56 M raw data was generated with 95.58% of them were mappable sequences. In total, 321 unique miRNAs were identified in three sequencing libraries of which 109 were differentially expressed. Ranking analysis showed that six out of the ten most highly expressed miRNAs in cardiac muscle were up-regulated compared with longissimus dorsi muscle and psoas major muscle. GO and KEGG pathway analyses for the predicted target genes of the six up-regulated miRNAs showed that the miRNAs highly expressed in CM are mainly involved in insulin and calcium signaling pathways and the constructed miRNA-mRNA interaction networks highlighted the important differences between cardiac and skeletal muscles, all these results may promote the researches on muscle-related diseases in a certain degree.
Ya Tan, Jideng Ma, Yingkai Liu, Keren Long, Liujun He, Xuewei Li and Li Zhu, 2014. MiRNAs Expressed at High Levels in Cardiac Muscle are Associated with Insulin and Calcium Signaling Pathways. Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 13: 28-36.