Research article
Gene expression studies of developing bovine longissimus muscle from two different beef cattle breeds
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* Corresponding author: Sigrid A Lehnert sigrid.lehnert@csiro.au
1 Cooperative Research Centre for Cattle and Beef Quality, Australia
2 CSIRO Livestock Industries, Queensland Bioscience Precinct, 306 Carmody Road, St Lucia 4067, Australia
3 South Australian Research & Development Institute (SARDI), Livestock Systems, Roseworthy 5371, Australia
4 School of Integrative Biology, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
5 Beef Industry Centre of Excellence, NSW Department of Primary Industries, JSF Barker Building, University of New England, Armidale 2351, Australia
BMC Developmental Biology 2007, 7:95 doi:10.1186/1471-213X-7-95
Published: 16 August 2007Abstract
Background
The muscle fiber number and fiber composition of muscle is largely determined during prenatal development. In order to discover genes that are involved in determining adult muscle phenotypes, we studied the gene expression profile of developing fetal bovine longissimus muscle from animals with two different genetic backgrounds using a bovine cDNA microarray. Fetal longissimus muscle was sampled at 4 stages of myogenesis and muscle maturation: primary myogenesis (d 60), secondary myogenesis (d 135), as well as beginning (d 195) and final stages (birth) of functional differentiation of muscle fibers. All fetuses and newborns (total n = 24) were from Hereford dams and crossed with either Wagyu (high intramuscular fat) or Piedmontese (GDF8 mutant) sires, genotypes that vary markedly in muscle and compositional characteristics later in postnatal life.
Results
We obtained expression profiles of three individuals for each time point and genotype to allow comparisons across time and between sire breeds. Quantitative reverse transcription-PCR analysis of RNA from developing longissimus muscle was able to validate the differential expression patterns observed for a selection of differentially expressed genes, with one exception. We detected large-scale changes in temporal gene expression between the four developmental stages in genes coding for extracellular matrix and for muscle fiber structural and metabolic proteins. FSTL1 and IGFBP5 were two genes implicated in growth and differentiation that showed developmentally regulated expression levels in fetal muscle. An abundantly expressed gene with no functional annotation was found to be developmentally regulated in the same manner as muscle structural proteins. We also observed differences in gene expression profiles between the two different sire breeds. Wagyu-sired calves showed higher expression of fatty acid binding protein 5 (FABP5) RNA at birth. The developing longissimus muscle of fetuses carrying the Piedmontese mutation shows an emphasis on glycolytic muscle biochemistry and a large-scale up-regulation of the translational machinery at birth. We also document evidence for timing differences in differentiation events between the two breeds.
Conclusion
Taken together, these findings provide a detailed description of molecular events accompanying skeletal muscle differentiation in the bovine, as well as gene expression differences that may underpin the phenotype differences between the two breeds. In addition, this study has highlighted a non-coding RNA, which is abundantly expressed and developmentally regulated in bovine fetal muscle.