scRNA‐seq of ovarian follicle granulosa cells from different fertility goats reveals distinct expression patterns

Abstract

The new technology of high‐throughput single‐cell RNA sequencing (10 × scRNA‐seq) was developed recently with many advantages. However, it was not commonly used in farm animal research. There are few reports for the gene expression of goat ovarian follicle granulosa cells (GCs) during different developmental stages. In the current investigation, the gene expression of follicle GCs at different stages from two populations of Ji'ning grey goats: high litter size (HL; ≥3/L; 2 L) and low litter size (LL; ≤2 /L; 2 L) were analysed by scRNA‐seq. Many GC marker genes were identified, and the pseudo‐time showed that GCs developed during the time course which reflected the follicular development and differentiation trajectory. Moreover, the gene expression difference between the two populations HL versus LL was very clear at different developmental stages. Many marker genes differentially expressed at different developmental stages. ASIP and ASPN were found to be highly expressed in the early stage of GCs, INHA, INHBA, MFGE8 and HSD17B1 were identified to be highly expressed in the growing stage of GCs, while IGFBP2, IGFBP5 and CYP11A1 were found to be highly expressed in late stage. These marker genes could be used as reference genes of goat follicle GC development. This investigation for the first time discovered the gene expression patterns in goat follicle GCs in high‐ or low‐fertility populations (based on litter size) by scRNA‐seq which may be useful for uncovering the oocyte development potential.

Integrative Genome-Wide DNA Methylome and Transcriptome Analysis of Ovaries from Hu Sheep with High and Low Prolific

“…As described above, focusing on the CG methylation context of DMGs, and we found that the common DMGs were significantly enriched in the TGF-β and Wnt signaling pathways, which have been confirmed to be involved in fecundity (Chu et al, 2007;Gao et al, 2020). For example, INHBA is associated with follicle development (Cui et al, 2020;Li et al, 2021), oocyte maturation (Tesfaye et al, 2009) and fecundity (Hiendleder et al, 1996;Yu et al, 2019). In the present study, INHBA was found to contain five distal intergenic DMRs, with four DMRs being hyper-methylated and one being hypo-methylated in the LPB + vs. HPBB group.…”

Single-Cell Atlas of the Chinese Tongue Sole (Cynoglossus semilaevis) Ovary Reveals Transcriptional Programs of Oogenesis in Fish

“…Dazl ( Bachvarova et al, 2004 ; Li et al, 2016 ; Bertho et al, 2021 ) was highly expressed in early oogonia, while the mitotic marker rad50 ( Kostyrko et al, 2015 ; Völkening et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021 ) was mainly expressed in mitotic oogonia ( Figure 1D ). In addition, we identified somatic cells based on the following markers: follicle cells ( foxl2 , amh and hsd17b1 ) ( Pisarska et al, 2011 ; Luo et al, 2020 ; Moolhuijsen and Visser, 2020 ; Li et al, 2021 ), endothelial cells ( fli1 and fn1a ) ( Nagai et al, 2018 ; Wu et al, 2021 ), T cells ( cd2 , cd247 and cd28 ) ( Hurley et al, 1994 ; Lundholm et al, 2010 ), macrophages ( cd68 , epx and mmp9 ) ( Hunyady et al, 1996 ; Sendler et al, 2018 ) and erythrocytes ( alas2 ) ( Munday et al, 2000 ; Tsang et al, 2017 ) ( Figure 1E ). The top 20 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in each cell were shown in Supplementary Figure S1D .…”

CYP19A1 May Influence Lambing Traits in Goats by Regulating the Biological Function of Granulosa Cells

“…The expression of INHBA is also detected in the cumulus and mural granulosa cells in sinus follicles [ 38 ]. Li et al postulated that INHBA is expressed at different follicular stages and has extremely high expression in the GCs growth period in multiparous-lamb goat population [ 39 ]. Notably, mutations in the INHBA gene have a significant effect on the litter size of sheep [ 34 ], thus further verifying that it can affect the lambing performance of goats by regulating the development of follicles.…”