Transcriptomic analyses revealed common tailed and perirenal adipose differentially expressed genes in four Chinese indigenous sheep breeds

Abstract

Fat deposition and distribution in different body sites are associated with livestock productivity. In some sheep breeds, fat is excessively accumulated around the tail region, which is regarded as the fat-tail phenotype. Though some plausible genes or genomic regions associated with the fat-tail phenotype were identified, further validation of them in different individuals and breeds is still required. In this study, we implemented differential expression analysis using RNA-seq data in longissimus dorsi muscle tissue (MUT), perirenal adipose tissue (PAT) and tail adipose tissue (TAT) of Hu sheep, which is a representative of short fat-tailed sheep. The result identified 1336, 427 and 665 di..