Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, PR China.
Comp Biochem Physiol Part D Genomics Proteomics. 2011 Sep;6(3):238-43. doi: 10.1016/j.cbd.2011.04.002. Epub 2011 Apr 22.
Myostatin (MSTN) plays a key role in the negative regulation of muscle growth and development during embryogenesis. The MSTN genes have different genetic characteristics in vertebrates: sole gene in mammals, gene duplication in fish, and alternative splicing in birds. To investigate the alternative splicing sites and developmental expression patterns of the duck MSTN genes, the mRNA and genome sequences were cloned, and the expression patterns were detected during breast muscle and leg muscle development by real-time PCR. In our study, four alternatively spliced forms of MSTN mRNA were found in the developing skeletal muscle of Peking duck, including two novel alternatively spliced transcripts, MSTN-c and MSTN-d. As a result of alternative splicing at the common GT-AG processing sites, MSTN-b and MSTN-c retained only the N-terminal TGFβ-propeptide superfamily domains. However, MSTN-d was not missing these domains, in contrast to MSTN-a. The real-time PCR results showed that there was no significant difference between breast muscle and leg muscle in MSTN-a mRNA expression, also in MSTN-b and MSTN-c. MSTN-a and MSTN-b have significant higher expressions than MSTN-c and MSTN-d, suggesting that they play the major role during embryo muscle development.
肌肉生长抑制素 (MSTN) 在胚胎发生过程中对肌肉生长和发育的负调控中起着关键作用。MSTN 基因在脊椎动物中有不同的遗传特征：哺乳动物中的单一基因、鱼类中的基因复制和鸟类中的选择性剪接。为了研究鸭 MSTN 基因的选择性剪接位点和发育表达模式，我们克隆了 mRNA 和基因组序列，并通过实时 PCR 检测了其在胸肌和腿肌发育过程中的表达模式。在我们的研究中，在北京鸭发育的骨骼肌中发现了四种 MSTN mRNA 的选择性剪接形式，包括两种新的选择性剪接转录本 MSTN-c 和 MSTN-d。由于在常见的 GT-AG 加工位点的选择性剪接，MSTN-b 和 MSTN-c 仅保留了 N 端 TGFβ-前肽超家族结构域。然而，与 MSTN-a 不同的是，MSTN-d 并没有缺失这些结构域。实时 PCR 结果表明，MSTN-a mRNA 表达在胸肌和腿肌之间没有显著差异，MSTN-b 和 MSTN-c 也是如此。MSTN-a 和 MSTN-b 的表达显著高于 MSTN-c 和 MSTN-d，表明它们在胚胎肌肉发育过程中起主要作用。
