Analysis of Genomic Alternative Splicing Patterns in Rat under Heat Stress Based on RNA-Seq Data.

Heat stress is one of the most severe challenges faced in livestock production in summer. Alternative splicing as an important post-transcriptional regulation is rarely studied in heat-stressed animals. Here, we performed and analyzed RNA-sequencing assays on the liver of Sprague-Dawley rats in control (22 °C, = 5) and heat stress (4 °C for 120 min, H120; = 5) groups, resulting in the identification of 636 differentially expressed genes. Identification analysis of the alternative splicing events revealed that heat stress-induced alternative splicing events increased by 20.18%. Compared with other types of alternative splicing events, the alternative start increased the most (43.40%) after heat stress. Twenty-eight genes were differentially alternatively spliced (DAS) between the control and H120 groups, among which , and were also differentially expressed. For DAS genes, , , and were associated with insulin, while , , , , and were enriched in the composition of the endoplasmic reticulum. In summary, our study conducts a comprehensive profile of alternative splicing in heat-stressed rats, indicating that alternative splicing is one of the molecular mechanisms of heat stress response in mammals and providing reference data for research on heat tolerance in mammalian livestock.