IAnimal: a cross-species omics knowledgebase for animals

Epigenomic features associated with body temperature stabilize tissues during cold exposure in cold-resistant pigs

Cold stress in low-temperature environments can trigger changes in gene expression, but epigenomics regulation of temperature stability in vital tissues, including the fat and diencephalon, is still unclear. Here, we explore the cold-induced changes in epigenomic features in the diencephalon and fat tissues of two cold-resistant Chinese pig breeds, Min and Enshi black (ES) pigs, utilizing H3K27ac CUT&Tag, RNA-seq, and selective signature analysis. Our results show significant alterations in H3K27ac modifications in the diencephalon of Min pigs and the fat of ES pigs after cold exposure. Dramatic changes in H3K27ac modifications in Min pigs are primarily associated with genes involved in energy metabolism and hormone regulation, whereas those in ES pigs are primarily associated with immunity-related genes. Moreover, transcription factors PRDM1 and HSF1, which show evidence of selection, are enriched in genomic regions presenting cold-responsive alterations in H3K27ac modification in the Min pig diencephalon and ES pig fat, respectively. Our results indicate the diversity of epigenomic response mechanisms to cold exposure between Min and ES pigs, providing unique epigenetic resources for studies of low-temperature adaptation in large mammals.

Research Progress and Applications of Bovine Genome in the Tribe Bovini

Various bovine species have been domesticated and bred for thousands of years, and they provide adequate animal-derived products, including meat, milk, and leather, to meet human requirements. Despite the review studies on economic traits in cattle, the genetic basis of traits has only been partially explained by phenotype and pedigree breeding methods, due to the complexity of genomic regulation during animal development and growth. With the advent of next-generation sequencing technology, genomics projects, such as the 1000 Bull Genomes Project, Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes project, and Bovine Pangenome Consortium, have advanced bovine genomic research. These large-scale genomics projects gave us a comprehensive concept, technology, and public resources. In this review, we summarize the genomics research progress of the main bovine species during the past decade, including cattle (Bos taurus), yak (Bos grunniens), water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis), zebu (Bos indicus), and gayal (Bos frontalis). We mainly discuss the development of genome sequencing and functional annotation, focusing on how genomic analysis reveals genetic variation and its impact on phenotypes in several bovine species.

Comprehensive analysis of the gene expression profile of the male and female BTBR mice with diabetic nephropathy

Comprehensive insight into the gender-based gene expression-related omics data in a rodent model of diabetic nephropathy (DN) is scarce. In the present study, the gender-based genes regulating different pathways involved in the progression of DN were explored through an unbiased RNA sequence of kidneys from BTBR mice with DN. We identified 17,739 and 17,981 genes in male and female DN mice; 1121 and 655 genes were expressed differentially (DEGs, differentially expressed genes) in male and female DN mice; both genders displayed only 195 DEGs. In the male DN mice, the number of upregulated genes was nearly the same as that of the down-regulated genes. In contrast, the number of upregulated genes was lesser than that of the down-regulated genes in the female DN mice, manifesting a remarkable gender disparity during the progression of DN in this animal model. Gene Ontology (GO) and KEGG-enriched results showed that most of these DEGs were related to the critical biological processes, including metabolic pathways, natural oxidation, bile secretion, and PPAR signaling; all are highly associated with DN. Notably, the DEGs significantly enriched for steroid hormone biosynthesis pathway were identified in both genders; the number of DEGs increased was 22 in male DN mice and 14 in female DN mice. Specifically, the Ugt1a10, Akr1c12, and Akr1c14 were upregulated in both genders. Interestingly, the Hsd11b1 gene was upregulated in female DN mice but downregulated in male DN mice. These results suggest that a significant gender-based variance in the gene expression occurs during the progression of DN and may be playing a role in the advancement of DN in the BTBR mouse model.

TCOD: an integrated resource for tropical crops

Tropical crops are vital for tropical agriculture, with resource scarcity, functional diversity and extensive market demand, providing considerable economic benefits for the world's tropical agriculture-producing countries. The rapid development of sequencing technology has promoted a milestone in tropical crop research, resulting in the generation of massive amount of data, which urgently needs an effective platform for data integration and sharing. However, the existing databases cannot fully satisfy researchers' requirements due to the relatively limited integration level and untimely update. Here, we present the Tropical Crop Omics Database (TCOD, https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/tcod), a comprehensive multi-omics data platform for tropical crops. TCOD integrates diverse omics data from 15 species, encompassing 34 chromosome-level de novo assemblies, 1 255 004 genes with functional annotations, 282 436 992 unique variants from 2048 WGS samples, 88 transcriptomic profiles from 1997 RNA-Seq samples and 13 381 germplasm items. Additionally, TCOD not only employs genes as a bridge to interconnect multi-omics data, enabling cross-species comparisons based on homology relationships, but also offers user-friendly online tools for efficient data mining and visualization. In short, TCOD integrates multi-species, multi-omics data and online tools, which will facilitate the research on genomic selective breeding and trait biology of tropical crops.

AGIDB: a versatile database for genotype imputation and variant decoding across species

The high cost of large-scale, high-coverage whole-genome sequencing has limited its application in genomics and genetics research. The common approach has been to impute whole-genome sequence variants obtained from a few individuals for a larger population of interest individually genotyped using SNP chip. An alternative involves low-coverage whole-genome sequencing (lcWGS) of all individuals in the larger population, followed by imputation to sequence resolution. To overcome limitations of processing lcWGS data and meeting specific genotype imputation requirements, we developed AGIDB (https://agidb.pro), a website comprising tools and database with an unprecedented sample size and comprehensive variant decoding for animals. AGIDB integrates whole-genome sequencing and chip data from 17 360 and 174 945 individuals, respectively, across 89 species to identify over one billion variants, totaling a massive 688.57 TB of processed data. AGIDB focuses on integrating multiple genotype imputation scenarios. It also provides user-friendly searching and data analysis modules that enable comprehensive annotation of genetic variants for specific populations. To meet a wide range of research requirements, AGIDB offers downloadable reference panels for each species in addition to its extensive dataset, variant decoding and utility tools. We hope that AGIDB will become a key foundational resource in genetics and breeding, providing robust support to researchers.

Epigenomic analysis of the myometrium during late implantation revealed regulatory elements in genes related to the cellular zinc homeostasis pathway in pigs

The myometrium, composed of the inner circular muscle (CM) and outer longitudinal muscle (LM), is crucial in establishing and maintaining early pregnancy. However, the molecular mechanisms involved are not well understood. In this study, we identified the transcriptomic features of the CM and LM collected from the mesometrial (M) and anti-mesometrial (AM) sides of the pig uterus on day 18 of pregnancy during the placentation initiation phase. Some genes in the cellular zinc ion level regulatory pathways (MT-1A, MT-1D, MT-2B, SLC30A2, and SLC39A2) were spatially and highly enriched in uterine CM at the mesometrial side. In addition, the histone modification profiles of H3K27ac and H3K4me3 in uterine CM and LM collected from the mesometrial side were characterized. Genomic regions associated with the expression of genes regulating the cellular zinc ion level were detected. Moreover, six highly linked variants in the H3K27ac-enriched region of the pig SLC30A2 gene were identified and found to be significantly associated with the total number born at the second parity (P < 0.05). In conclusion, the genes in the pathways of cellular zinc homeostasis and their regulatory elements identified have implications for pig reproduction trait improvement and warrant further investigations.