Abstract:

Digital Gene Expression Tag Profiling (DGE) technology was used to construct gene expression profile to screen differentially expressed genes of the ovary tissue between FecBBFecBB and FecB+FecB+ ewes of small-tail-han-sheep and investigate the molecular mechanism related to fecundity difference between them. GO (Gene Ontology) and the Pathway analysis were conducted on differentially expressed genes using a free web-based molecular annotation system DAVID. A total of 238 genes were identified to be differentially expressed genes. They were mainly involved in steroid biosynthetic and metabolic process, sterol biosynthetic and metabolic process, lipid transport and localization, ubiquitin-specific protease activity, GTPase regulator activity and regulation of Ras protein signal transduction etc. The enriched pathways mainly included endocytosis, Notch signaling pathway and pyrimidine metabolism. According to published papers, the genes including STAR, FLCN, TGFI1, INHA, INHBA and the Notch signaling pathway were considered as the most important genes and pathway involved in fecundity differences between FecBBFecBB and FecB+FecB+ ewes of small-tail-han-sheep.