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Long non‐coding MEG 3 is a marker for skeletal muscle development and meat production traits in pigs
Author(s) -
Yu X.,
Wang Z.,
Sun H.,
Yang Y.,
Li K.,
Tang Z.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
animal genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.756
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1365-2052
pISSN - 0268-9146
DOI - 10.1111/age.12712
Subject(s) - biology , skeletal muscle , single nucleotide polymorphism , transcriptome , linkage disequilibrium , rna , genetics , gene expression , gene , endocrinology , genotype
Summary Long non‐coding RNA maternally expressed gene 3 (lnc RNA MEG 3 ) plays an important role in mammalian muscle development. Our previous transcriptome study showed that lnc RNA MEG 3 is differentially expressed during postnatal skeletal muscle development in pigs. The objective of the present study was to analyse the role of lnc RNA MEG 3 in prenatal and postnatal skeletal muscle development and investigate the association of MEG 3 with meat production traits in pigs. We investigated the sequence conservation and temporal‐spatial expression of lnc RNA MEG 3 and identified its core promoter and single nucleotide polymorphisms ( SNP s). Our results show that MEG 3 is conserved among pig, human and mouse and is expressed in a tissue‐specific manner with high expression levels in kidney and leg and dorsal muscles. In addition, MEG 3 is more abundant in prenatal muscle compared to postnatal muscle, and its expression peaks at gestational day 60. Notably, we observed almost no expression 40 days after birth. The core promoter of MEG 3 is located upstream of the transcription initiation site between −447 and −40 bp. In our SNP linkage disequilibrium and association analyses, four of the 10 potential polymorphism sites were found to be associated with corrected back fat thickness and age to reach 100 kg (rs325797437, rs344501106, rs81286029 and rs318656749). In addition, three haplotypes were found to be associated with differences in corrected age to reach 100 kg ( AAAT , AAAT / GGGC , GAAT / GGGC ). Our results indicate that MEG 3 regulates skeletal muscle development and is a candidate gene for improving meat production traits in pigs.