Evolution, dynamic expression changes and regulatory characteristics of gene families involved in the glycerophosphate pathway of triglyceride synthesis in chicken (Gallus gallus)

Abstract

It is well documented that four gene families, including the glycerophosphate acyltransferases (GPATs), acylglycerophosphate acyltransferases (AGPATs), lipid phosphate phosphohydrolases (LPINs) and diacylglycerol acyltransferases (DGATs), are involved in the glycerophosphate pathway of de novo triglyceride (TG) biosynthesis in mammals. However, no systematic analysis has been conducted to characterize the gene families in poultry. In this study, the sequences of gene family members in the glycerophosphate pathway were obtained by screening the public databases. The phylogenetic tree, gene structures and conserved motifs of the corresponding proteins were evaluated. Dynamic expression changes of the genes at different developmental stages were analyzed by qRT-PCR. The regulatory characteristics of the genes were analyzed by in vivo experiments. The results showed that the GPAT , AGPAT and LPIN gene families have 2, 7 and 2 members, respectively, and they were classified into 2, 4 and 2 cluster respectively based on phylogenetic analysis. All of the genes except AGPAT1 were extensively expressed in various tissues. Estrogen induction upregulated the expression of GPAM and AGPAT2 , downregulated the expression of AGPAT3 , AGPAT9 , LPIN1 and LPIN2 , and had no effect on the expression of the other genes. These findings provide a valuable resource for further investigation of lipid metabolism in liver of chicken.

Estrogen Abolishes the Repression Role of gga-miR-221-5p Targeting ELOVL6 and SQLE to Promote Lipid Synthesis in Chicken Liver

“…Genes involved in this lipid synthesis process, including ELOVL6 related to fatty acids and SQLE related to cholesterol, were upregulated by estrogen at the genome level, while estrogen repressed the expression of gga-miR-221-5p, which was proved by in vitro and in vivo trial. Moreover, we found that the TG and TC contents were also dramatically increased under the estrogen treatment in chicken [47], and our results were consistent with previous studies [48]. Meanwhile, it is well known that liver X receptor alpha (LXR-α) is also an important regulators of liver lipid metabolism.…”

Expression characteristics and regulatory mechanism of Apela gene in liver of chicken (Gallus gallus)

“…The blood plasma biochemical index of associated with lipid synthesis and metabolism mainly include triglyceride (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), total cholesterol (TC) and very low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL-c) [ 25 , 28 ]. Among them, the cotent of first four index in serum samples were detected using a blood analyzer (Hitachi 7100), while the cotent of VLDL-c was indirectly calculated by the Friedewald formula: VLDL-c = TC-HDL-c-LDL-c [ 26 , 27 , 29 , 30 ].…”

“…Meanwhile, estrogen, as an important inducer of certain liver genes, rises significantly in the sexually mature hens compared to the sexually immature hens [ 23 ]. And most of those estrogen-induced genes involve in hepatic fatty acid synthesis and the assembly of triglyceride-rich lipoprotein particles to lead to hypersecretion of these lipoproteins into the circulation [ 24 , 25 ].…”

Evolution, Expression Profile, Regulatory Mechanism, and Functional Verification of EBP-Like Gene in Cholesterol Biosynthetic Process in Chickens (Gallus Gallus)

“…As reported previously, orthologous genes might be differentiated from a common ancestral gene ( Yang et al, 2019 ). To further evaluate the evolutionary relationships between EBP / EBP-like in different species, here, a rooted evolutionary time tree was constructed with zebrafish EBP served as an outgroup sequence.…”

“…The reliability of the tree was assessed using 1,000 bootstrap replicates. The numbers at each clade represent bootstrap support values were given as percentages ( Tian et al, 2018 ; Yang et al, 2019 ). Percentage amino acid sequence identity and sequence similarity were determined using the BLOSUM62 matrix algorithm ( Styczynski et al, 2008 ).…”