Identification and Functional Analysis of lncRNAs Responsive to Hypoxia in <i>Eospalax fontanierii</i>

oleh: Zhiqiang Hao, Mingfang Han, Juanjuan Guo, Guanglin Li, Jianping He, Jingang Li

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-11-01

Deskripsi

Subterranean rodents could maintain their normal activities in hypoxic environments underground. <i>Eospalax fontanierii</i>, as one kind of subterranean rodent found in China can survive very low oxygen concentration in labs. It has been demonstrated that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have important roles in gene expression regulations at different levels and some lncRNAs were found as hypoxia-regulated lncRNAs in cancers. We predicted thousands of lncRNAs in the liver and heart tissues by analyzing RNA-Seq data in <i>Eospalax fontanierii</i>. Those lncRNAs often have shorter lengths, lower expression levels, and lower GC contents than mRNAs. Majors of lncRNAs have expression peaks in hypoxia conditions. We found 1128 DE-lncRNAs (differential expressed lncRNAs) responding to hypoxia. To search the miRNA regulation network for lncRNAs, we predicted 471 and 92 DE-lncRNAs acting as potential miRNA target and target mimics, respectively. We also predicted the functions of DE-lncRNAs based on the co-expression networks of lncRNA-mRNA. The DE-lncRNAs participated in the functions of biological regulation, signaling, development, oxoacid metabolic process, lipid metabolic/biosynthetic process, and catalytic activity. As the first study of lncRNAs in <i>Eospalax fontanierii</i>, our results show that lncRNAs are popular in transcriptome widely and can participate in multiple biological processes in hypoxia responses.