BioProject

The anterior pituitary is the most important endocrine organ modulating animal postnatal growth, mainly by controlling growth hormone (GH) gene transcription, synthesis, and secretion. More...

The anterior pituitary is the most important endocrine organ modulating animal postnatal growth, mainly by controlling growth hormone (GH) gene transcription, synthesis, and secretion. As an ideal model for animal postnatal growth studies, the Bama minipig is characterized as having a lower growth performance and fewer individual differences compared with larger pig breeds. In this study, anterior pituitaries from Bama minipig and Landrace pig were used for miRNA and mRNA expression profile analysis using miRNA microarrays and mRNA-seq. Consequently, a total of 222 miRNAs and 12,909 transcripts were detected, and both miRNAs and mRNAs in the two breeds showed high correlation (r > 0.97). Additionally, 41 differentially expressed miRNAs and 2,254 transcripts were identified. Pathways analysis indicated that 32 pathways significantly differed in the two breeds. Importantly, two GH-regulation-signalling pathways, cAMP and inositol 1, 4, 5-triphosphate (IP3), and multiple GH-secretion-related transcripts were significantly down-regulated in Bama minipigs. Moreover, target prediction by two algorithms (TargetScan and RNAhybrid) indicated that most miRNA–mRNA target pairs (63.68–71.33%) presented a negatively correlated expression pattern. A possible network among miRNAs, mRNAs, and GH-regulation pathways was also proposed. These data will be helpful in understanding the possible molecular mechanisms involved in animal postnatal growth. Overall design: 2 pooled samples were analyzed. A pool of 3 pig anterior pituitary was used for Bama minpigs and Landrace pigs,respectively. Less...