Integrated Full-Length Transcriptome and RNA-Seq to Identify Immune System Genes from the Skin of Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus)

Genes

Daling Wang¹  Yu Zhen¹  Ying Li¹  Liyuan Zhao²  Reyilamu Aierken²  Qianhui Zeng²  Xianyan Wang²  Zhichang Fan³  Qi Kang³ 

[1] College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China;Laboratory of Marine Biology and Ecology, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Ecological Conservation and Restoration, Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen 361005, China;State Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Biology, School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102, China;

关键词: NOD-like receptor (NLR)-signaling pathway;    NOD1;    sperm whale;    transcriptome;   

DOI  :  10.3390/genes12020233

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Cetaceans are a group of secondary aquatic mammals whose ancestors returned to the ocean from land, and during evolution, their immune systems adapted to the aquatic environment. Their skin, as the primary barrier to environmental pathogens, supposedly evolved to adapt to a new living environment. However, the immune system in the skin of cetaceans and the associated molecular mechanisms are still largely unknown. To better understand the immune system, we extracted RNA from the sperm whale’s (Physeter macrocephalus) skin and performed PacBio full-length sequencing and RNA-seq sequencing. We obtained a total of 96,350 full-length transcripts with an average length of 1705 bp and detected 5150 genes that were associated with 21 immune-related pathways by gene annotation enrichment analysis. Moreover, we found 89 encoding genes corresponding to 33 proteins were annotated in the NOD-like receptor (NLR)-signaling pathway, including NOD1, NOD2, RIP2, and NF-kB genes, which were discussed in detail and predicted to play essential roles in the immune system of the sperm whale. Furthermore, NOD1 was highly conservative during evolution by the sequence comparison and phylogenetic tree. These results provide new information about the immune system in the skin of cetaceans, as well as the evolution of immune-related genes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown