Comprehensive Transcriptome Analysis of lncRNAs Reveals the Role of lncAD in Chicken Intramuscular and Abdominal Adipogenesis

Adipose tissue-specific distribution and deposition speed are the main factors affecting the slaughter performance and meat quality in poultry. Previous studies suggested that different adipose tissues owned various biochemical characteristics and gene expression patterns. To investigate the functional role of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) during chicken intramuscular and abdominal adipogenesis, we performed transcriptome analysis by Ribo-Zero RNA-Seq technology. A total of 11247 lncRNAs were observed in the adipocytes derived from IMF and AbF in chicken. Among them, we got 1624 differentiated expressed novel lncRNAs. A large amount of lncRNAs were involved in several lipid metabolism and adipogenesis-related signaling pathways. Of these, lncRNAs, lncAD is one of the most upregulated lncRNA and was coexpressed with several genes of the PPAR signaling pathway. Here, we report that knockdown of lncAD inhibited its upstream gene TXNRD1 expression in a cis-regulation manner, thus to decrease intramuscular preadipocytes adipogenic differentiation and promoted cell proliferation. Our present study revealed huge lncRNAs profile differences between IMF- and AbF-derived preadipocyte adipogenesis. Collectively, our findings not only provide valuable evidence for the identification of adipogenic lncRNAs but also contribute to further studies about the post-transcriptional regulation mechanism underlying tissue-specific fat deposition in poultry.