Revealing stage-specific expression patterns of long noncoding RNAs along mouse spermatogenesis

作者：María F. Trovero, Rosana Rodríguez‐Casuriaga, Carlos Romeo, Federico F. Santiñaque, Mateo François, Gustavo A. Folle, Ricardo Benavente, José Sotelo‐Silveira, Adriana Geisinger · 发表于：RNA Biology · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1080/15476286.2019.1700332 · 被引用次数：52 · 研究领域：Cancer-related molecular mechanisms research、Plant and Fungal Interactions Research、RNA Research and Splicing

The discovery of a large number of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and the finding that they may play key roles in different biological processes, have started to provide a new perspective in the understanding of gene regulation. It has been shown that the testes express the highest amount of lncRNAs among different vertebrate tissues. However, although some studies have addressed the characterization of lncRNAs along spermatogenesis, an exhaustive analysis of the differential expression of lncRNAs at its different stages is still lacking. Here, we present the results for lncRNA transcriptome profiling along mouse spermatogenesis, employing highly pure flow sorted spermatogenic stage-specific cell populations, strand-specific RNAseq, and a combination of up-to-date bioinformatic pipelines for analysis. We found that the vast majority of testicular lncRNA genes are expressed at post-meiotic stages (i.e. spermiogenesis), which are characterized by extensive post-transcriptional regulation. LncRNAs at different spermatogenic stages shared common traits in terms of transcript length, exon number, and biotypes. Most lncRNAs were lincRNAs, followed by a high representation of antisense (AS) lncRNAs. Co-expression analyses showed a high correlation along the different spermatogenic stage transitions between the expression patterns of AS lncRNAs and their overlapping protein-coding genes, raising possible clues about lncRNA-related regulatory mechanisms. Interestingly, we observed the...