Laboratory of Evolutionary and Functional Genomics, School of Life Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
College of Life Science, China West Normal University, Nanchong, Sichuan, China.
Insect Sci. 2018 Aug;25(4):604-616. doi: 10.1111/1744-7917.12443. Epub 2017 May 16.
Under long-term artificial selection, the domestic silkworm (Bombyx mori) has increased its silk yield tremendously in comparison with its wild progenitor, Bombyx mandarina. However, the molecular mechanism of silk yield increase is still unknown. Comparative analysis of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) may provide some insights into understanding this phenotypic variation. In this study, using RNA sequencing technology data of silk gland in domestic and wild silkworms, we identified 599 lncRNAs in the silk gland of the silkworm. Compared with protein-coding genes, the silk gland lncRNA genes tend to have fewer exon numbers, shorter transcript length and lower GC-content. Moreover, we found that three lncRNA genes are significantly and differentially expressed between domestic and wild silkworms. The potential targets of two differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs) (dw4sg_0040 and dw4sg_0483) and the expression-correlated genes with the two DELs are mainly enriched in the related processes of silk protein translation. This implies that these DELs may affect the phenotypic variation in silk yield between the domestic and wild silkworms through the post-transcriptional regulation of silk protein.
在长期的人工选择下，家蚕（Bombyx mori）的丝产量与野生祖先 B. mandarina 相比有了极大的提高。然而，丝产量增加的分子机制尚不清楚。长非编码 RNA（lncRNA）的比较分析可能有助于理解这种表型变异。在这项研究中，我们使用家蚕和野蚕丝腺的 RNA 测序技术数据，在家蚕丝腺中鉴定了 599 个 lncRNA。与编码蛋白的基因相比，丝腺 lncRNA 基因往往具有较少的外显子数、较短的转录长度和较低的 GC 含量。此外，我们发现三个 lncRNA 基因在家蚕和野蚕之间存在显著的差异表达。两个差异表达 lncRNA（DEL）（dw4sg_0040 和 dw4sg_0483）的潜在靶基因以及与这两个 DEL 表达相关的基因主要富集在丝蛋白翻译的相关过程中。这表明这些 DEL 可能通过丝蛋白的转录后调控影响家蚕和野蚕之间丝产量的表型变异。
