Background: Long non coding RNA (lncRNA) as important regulator has been demonstrated playing an indispensable role in the biological process of hair follicles (HFs) growth. However, their function and expression profile in hair cycling of yak are yet unknown. It only a few functional lncRNAs have been identified, partly due to the low sequence conservation and lack of identified conserved properties in lncRNAs. Here, lncRNA-seq was employed to detect the expression profile of lncRNAs during HFs cycle of yak, and the sequence conservation between yak and cashmere goat during HFs cycle was analyzed.
Result: Totally 2884 lncRNAs were identified in five phases (Jan. Mar. Jun. Aug. and Oct.) during HFs cycle of yak. We then performed differential expression analysis between three phases (Jan. Mar. and Oct.) finding that 198 differently expressed lncRNAs (DELs) were obtained in Oct-vs-Jan, 280 DELs were obtained in Jan-vs-Mar, and 340 DELs were obtained in Mar-vs-Oct. Subsequently, the nearest genes of DELs were used to explore the potential function of lncRNAs by GO and KEGG enrichment analysis, several critical pathways involved in HFs development such as Wnt signaling pathway, VEGF signaling pathway and Signaling pathways regulating pluripotency of stem cells were enriched. To further screen key lncRNAs influencing in HFs cycle, twenty-four sequence conserved DELs were obained via comparison analysis of partial DELs with previously published lncRNA-seq data of cashmere goat in HFs cycle by NCBI blast-2.9.0+, and the limited degree of sequence conservation of lncRNAs were observed.
Conclusion: Our study expanded the knowledge about lncRNAs affecting on hair cycling, and the finding related to sequence conservation properties of lncRNAs between two species at the specific trait- HFs cycle will likely provide valuable insights into the study of lncRNAs functionality and mechanism.