Agriculture Commons^™

Increase of fat cells (FCs) in adipose tissue is attributed to proliferation of preadipocytes or immature adipocytes in the early stage, as well as adipogenic differentiation in the later stage of adipose development. Although both events are involved in the FC increase, they are contrary to each other, because the former requires cell cycle activity, whereas the latter requires cell cycle withdrawal. Therefore, appropriate regulation of cell cycle inhibition is critical to adipogenesis. In order to explore the important cell cycle inhibitors and study their expression in adipogenesis, we adopted a strategy combining the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database available …

Background: It is widely known that castration has a significant effect on the accumulation of adipose tissue. microRNAs (miRNAs) are known to be involved in fat deposition and to be regulated by the androgen-induced androgen receptor (AR). However, there is little understanding of the relationship between miRNAs and fat deposition after castration. In this study, the high-throughput SOLiD sequencing approach was used to identify and characterize miRNA expression in backfat from intact and castrated full-sib male 23-week-old pigs. The patterns of adipogenesis and fat deposition were compared between castrated and intact male pigs.

Results: A total of 366 unique miRNA …