Identification of long noncoding genes associated with Ascites Syndrome

Ascites syndrome occurs in growing broilers in all parts of the world and is a major cause of losses in many flocks. In addition to genetic and non-genetic factors, differential expression of genes in susceptible chickens compared to resistant chickens during or before onset of the disease is likely involved. This difference in gene expression can be influenced by long non-coding RNAs. Therefore, the aim of this research was to identify and discover long non-coding genes effective in ascites syndrome in four tissues of broilers.Ascites.

Six data sets in four tissues (liver, kidney, heart and pulmonary artery) were used for this research. Hisat2 software was used to align the reads with chicken reference genome and Sting Tie software package was used to assemble the transcripts. To identify long non-coding genes, we used various software (CPC2, CNIT PLEK, FEELNC, PLIT) and BLAST methods. meta-RNAseq software and Fisher's method were used to perform meta-analysis.

Examination of the results of this research revealed that 188 lncRNAs were detected in the examined tissues and identified as new long non-coding RNAs. Of these, 160 lncRNAs were located within 50,000 contiguous 689 genes. Coexpression analysis showed that there was a correlation of 0.9 between 13 lncRNAs and 17 neighboring genes. Of these 17 neighboring genes, 6 coding genes were known. Examination of the level of significance between the healthy group and the ascites group in the examined tissues showed that in the pulmonary artery tissue the expression of 4 genes was significantly different and these 4 adjacent coding genes with 3 lncRNAs, i.e. H. an lncRNA that controls two adjacent genes. In the meta-analysis, 9 lncRNA genes were differentially expressed between healthy chickens and ascites chickens.

The results of this research showed that lncRNAs play an important role in theoccurrence of ascites disease and that genetic management can reduce the occurrence of thiscomplication in poultry farms and control economic losses.