Project description:Understanding the molecular mechanisms defining and maintaining the identity of a specific neuronal cell type is a central goal in neuroscience. The vomeronasal organ (VNO) of mice contains hundreds of distinct vomeronasal sensory neurons (VSNs). The VSNs are classified into two major cell types that are segregated in apical and basal regions of the VNO, express vomeronasal receptors of different superfamilies, and send axons to different portions of the accessory olfactory bulb. How apical or basal identity of VSNs is established and maintained is largely unknown. Here we attempt to assess the role of a single transcription factor, AP-2ε, in the VNO of mice. We used microarrays to examine global effect of AP-2ε loss-of-function on gene expression in the vomeronasal organ.
Project description:Fetal myogenesis and postnatal skeletal muscle hypertrophy in growing pigs are critical yet poorly understood processes. Global gene expression analyses will increase understanding of these processes by identifying key genes and pathways controlling skeletal muscle development. For this study, a pig 70-mer oligonucleotide microarray was used to identify differentially expressed genes in hind limb skeletal muscle of pigs at 60 days of gestation and 7 weeks of age. This oligonucleotide microarray experiment revealed 162 genes that were differentially expressed between 60 day fetal and 7 week postnatal samples. Relative real-time RT-PCR was used to confirm differential expression of three genes. This experiment identified genes exhibiting different developmental patterns of gene expression in pig skeletal muscle. Keywords: developmental study
Project description:Fetal myogenesis and postnatal skeletal muscle hypertrophy in growing pigs are critical yet poorly understood processes. Global gene expression analyses will increase understanding of these processes by identifying key genes and pathways controlling skeletal muscle development. For this study, a pig 70-mer oligonucleotide microarray was used to identify differentially expressed genes in hind limb skeletal muscle of pigs at 60 days of gestation and 7 weeks of age. This oligonucleotide microarray experiment revealed 162 genes that were differentially expressed between 60 day fetal and 7 week postnatal samples. Relative real-time RT-PCR was used to confirm differential expression of three genes. This experiment identified genes exhibiting different developmental patterns of gene expression in pig skeletal muscle. Oligonucleotide microarrays used for this study consisted of 13,297 70-mer oligos (Pig Array-Ready Oligo Set v. 1.0 and Pig Oligo Extension Set v. 1.0, Qiagen, Inc., Valencia, CA) each spotted once on a single slide . Controls included 76 Arabidopsis thaliana gene spots, 17 beta tubulin spots, 17 glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase spots, 85 heat shock protein gene spots, 69 ribosomal protein gene spots, 112 randomly generated negative control spots and 470 blanks. The oligonucleotide microarray was screened with samples obtained from pigs at 60 days of gestation and 7 weeks of age postnatal (n = 3 per age). Six oligonucleotide microarray slides were screened. All samples were used twice, labeled once with Cy3 and once with Cy5, and each 60 day gestation sample was randomly paired with two different 7 week postnatal samples.
Project description:Intramuscular fat (IMF) and its fatty acid composition in longissimus dorsi muscle (LM) are changed along with the growth of age, which partly determines the flavor and nutritional value of goat meat. However, unlike cattle, there is few data available on the transcriptome-wide changes at different postnatal stages in small ruminants specially for goats. In this study, the transcriptome by RNA sequencing of goat LM tissues collected from kid, youth and adult period were mapped to goat genome. Out of a total of 24689 unigenes, 20435 unigenes were annotated. Based on FPKM a total of 111 annotated differentially expressed genes (DEG) were identified among different postnatal stages, which was then classified to 16 possible expression patterns by series-cluster analysis. Functional classification through GO was used for selecting the top expressed genes related to lipid metabolism. Using co-expression analysis, we identified the node genes for lipid metabolism regulation. In conclusion, these data may provide candidate genes with high probability of having functional roles in regulating goat IMF deposition during the various growth stages.