Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(11):e26729. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026729. Epub 2011 Nov 3.
The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) is a long-lived, cancer resistant rodent and there is a great interest in identifying the adaptations responsible for these and other of its unique traits. We employed RNA sequencing to compare liver gene expression profiles between naked mole-rats and wild-derived mice. Our results indicate that genes associated with oxidoreduction and mitochondria were expressed at higher relative levels in naked mole-rats. The largest effect is nearly 300-fold higher expression of epithelial cell adhesion molecule (Epcam), a tumour-associated protein. Also of interest are the protease inhibitor, alpha2-macroglobulin (A2m), and the mitochondrial complex II subunit Sdhc, both ageing-related genes found strongly over-expressed in the naked mole-rat. These results hint at possible candidates for specifying species differences in ageing and cancer, and in particular suggest complex alterations in mitochondrial and oxidation reduction pathways in the naked mole-rat. Our differential gene expression analysis obviated the need for a reference naked mole-rat genome by employing a combination of Illumina/Solexa and 454 platforms for transcriptome sequencing and assembling transcriptome contigs of the non-sequenced species. Overall, our work provides new research foci and methods for studying the naked mole-rat's fascinating characteristics.
裸鼹鼠（Heterocephalus glaber）是一种长寿且具有抗癌能力的啮齿动物，人们对确定导致其具有这些独特特征和其他特征的适应机制非常感兴趣。我们采用 RNA 测序技术比较了裸鼹鼠和野生型小鼠的肝脏基因表达谱。我们的结果表明，与氧化还原和线粒体相关的基因在裸鼹鼠中表达水平相对较高。最大的影响是上皮细胞黏附分子（Epcam）的表达水平高出近 300 倍，Epcam 是一种与肿瘤相关的蛋白。同样引人关注的是蛋白酶抑制剂α2-巨球蛋白（A2m）和线粒体复合物 II 亚基 Sdhc，这两个与衰老相关的基因在裸鼹鼠中表达强烈上调。这些结果暗示了可能存在特定物种在衰老和癌症方面差异的候选基因，特别是表明了裸鼹鼠中线粒体和氧化还原途径的复杂变化。通过结合使用 Illumina/Solexa 和 454 平台进行转录组测序，并组装非测序物种的转录组 contigs，我们的差异基因表达分析避免了对裸鼹鼠参考基因组的需求。总的来说，我们的工作为研究裸鼹鼠迷人特征提供了新的研究重点和方法。
