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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 15|pp 15705—15729

Gene expression profiles during postnatal development of the liver and pancreas in giant pandas

Jinnan Ma1, Fujun Shen2, Lei Chen3, Honglin Wu4, Yan Huang4, Zhenxin Fan1,3, Rong Hou2, Bisong Yue1,3, Xiuyue Zhang1,3
  • 1Key Laboratory of Bio-resources and Eco-environment, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
  • 2The Sichuan Key Laboratory for Conservation Biology of Endangered Wildlife, Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, Chengdu 610081, China
  • 3Sichuan Key Laboratory of Conservation Biology on Endangered Wildlife, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
  • 4China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, Wolong, Sichuan 623006, China
* Equal contribution
Received: April 20, 2020Accepted: July 14, 2020Published: August 15, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103783

Copyright © 2020 Ma et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Giant pandas are unique Carnivora with a strict bamboo diet. To investigate the molecular mechanism of giant panda nutrient metabolism from newborn to adult, the gene expression profiles of giant panda liver and pancreas tissues collected from three important feeding stages were investigated using RNA-seq. We found a total of 3,211 hepatic and 3,343 pancreatic differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from three comparisons between suckling and no feeding, adult and no feeding, and adult and suckling groups. Few differences in gene-expression profiles were exhibited between no feeding and suckling groups in both tissues. GO and KEGG analyses were performed to further understand the biological functions of the DEGs. In both the liver and pancreas, genes related mainly to cell cycle processes were highly up-regulated in newborn samples whereas genes related to metabolism and immunity were up-regulated in adult giant pandas. The high expression of metabolism-related genes in adult samples probably helps to fulfill the metabolic function requirements of the liver and pancreas. In contrast, several vital genes involved in cholesterol metabolism and protein digestion and absorption were over-expressed in newborn samples. This may indicate the importance of cholesterol metabolism and protein digestion and absorption processes in giant panda infancy.