TITLE:
Assembly and Analysis of Changes in Transcriptomes of Dairy Cattle Rumen Epithelia during Lactation and Dry Periods
AUTHORS:
Cong-Jun Li, Robert W. Li, Ransom L. Baldwin VI
KEYWORDS:
Dairy Cattle, Lactation, RNA-Sequencing, Transcriptome, Rumen Epithelium, Gene Expression
JOURNAL NAME:
Agricultural Sciences,
Vol.9 No.5,
May
31,
2018
ABSTRACT: Lactation in dairy cattle is coupled with increased nutrient requirements for milk synthesis. Therefore, dairy cattle metabolism has to adapt to meet lactation-associated challenges and requires major functional adjustments of the rumen and whole digestive system. This report describes the use of next-generation sequencing technology for assembly and profiling of the transcriptome of cattle rumen epithelial tissues from cattle in both dry and lactation periods. Transcriptomics profiling and comparison revealed extensive changes in gene expression related to metabolism in rumen epithelial tissue due to the adaptation to lactation. Ruminal epithelial adaptation to the challenges of metabolism and high nutrient requirements during lactation is presumably the primary triggers for these alterations in gene expression. Principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that the gene expression profiles of the rumen epithelia from dry and lactating cattle fall into two very distinct clusters. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis revealed that the most GO terms were related to various metabolic processes in lactating cattle. The most significantly (false discovery rate (FDR) p-value