Article
The sheep genome illuminates biology of the rumen and lipid metabolism
Affiliations
Organisations
- (1) Kunming Institute of Zoology, grid.419010.d
- (2) Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, grid.1016.6
- (3) North West Agriculture and Forestry University, grid.144022.1
- (4) Beijing Genomics Institute, grid.21155.32
- (5) University of Edinburgh, grid.4305.2
- (6) Utah State University, grid.53857.3c
- (7) Laboratoire de Génétique Cellulaire, grid.419081.5
- (8) Baylor College of Medicine, grid.39382.33
- (9) Institute of ATCG, Nei Mongol Bio-Information, Hohhot, China
- (10) Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, grid.411638.9
- (11) University of Otago, grid.29980.3a
- (12) AgResearch, grid.417738.e
- (13) Wellcome Sanger Institute, grid.10306.34
- (14) European Bioinformatics Institute, grid.225360.0
- (15) University of Copenhagen, grid.5254.6, KU
- (16) Agricultural Research Service, grid.463419.d
- (17) Washington State University, grid.30064.31
- (18) Sichuan Agricultural University, grid.80510.3c
- (19) Lanzhou Institute of Husbandry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, grid.464362.1
- (20) Roslin Institute, grid.482685.5
- (21) University of New England, grid.1020.3
- (22) University of Sydney, grid.1013.3
- (23) King Abdulaziz University, grid.412125.1
- (24) Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China
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Description
Sheep (Ovis aries) are a major source of meat, milk, and fiber in the form of wool and represent a distinct class of animals that have a specialized digestive organ, the rumen, that carries out the initial digestion of plant material. We have developed and analyzed a high-quality reference sheep genome and transcriptomes from 40 different tissues. We identified highly expressed genes encoding keratin cross-linking proteins associated with rumen evolution. We also identified genes involved in lipid metabolism that had been amplified and/or had altered tissue expression patterns. This may be in response to changes in the barrier lipids of the skin, an interaction between lipid metabolism and wool synthesis, and an increased role of volatile fatty acids in ruminants compared with nonruminant animals.