Transcriptome hallmarks of musculoskeletal fatigue in blood of Arabian horses under racing training regime

• Published in: Journal of animal science 2016-09, Vol.94, p.140-140
• Main Authors: Stefaniuk-Szmukier, M, Ropka-Molik, K, Zukowski, K, Piórkowska, K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Actin; Adenosine triphosphatase; Animal breeding; Animal husbandry; Animal training; Arab people; Biological activity; Blood; Breeding; Breeding of animals; CD44 antigen; Cytoskeleton; Fatigue; Gene expression; Gene sequencing; Genes; Horse racing; Horses; Muscles; Musculoskeletal system; Proteoglycans; Ribonucleic acid; RNA; Thyroid; Training; Transcription activation; Ubiquinone
• ISSN: 0021-8812; 1525-3163

The Arabians are commonly believed to be one of the oldest and the most influential horse breeds in the world and have been widely used to improve several horse breeds. Since the eighteenth century they have a very special place in Polish horse breeding. The origin of founding mares traces back to 1800 and since then the breeding is documented as pure breed. That is why Polish population are excellent example of a closed population, strongly affected by selection. The race track performance is considered as one of the selection criteria of Arabian horses which favorably influences the development of young horses. On the other hand racing training is considered to be aggravating for a developing organism, thus the aim of presented research is identification of the transcriptomic signatures of musculoskeletal fatigue in the blood of Arabian horses under a racing training regime. The RNA-seq analysis of blood has been performed for 6 2,5 y.o. horses. Total of 12 samples has been collected in two periods: I-unbroken and II-after heavy canters. The RNA sequencing was performed in 75 single-end cycles on HiScanSQ platform (Illumina). The cDNA libraries were prepared by using TruSeq RNA Kit v2 kit (Illumina) and their quality and quantity were estimated using Qubit 2.0 (Invitrogen) and TapeStation 2200 (Agilent). Validation of obtained results was performed by the real-time PCR method. The differentially expressed genes (DEG) were determined using Deseq2 software. Between two investigated training periods we detected the high number of significant differentially expressed genes (FDR < 0.05; fold change < 1.5): 2544 DEGs. Apart from a large number of transcripts corresponding to the general biological processes, the pathways indicating musculoskeletal fatigue have been observed. The identified pathways regarding regulation of proteoglycans, regulation of actin cytoskeleton, thyroid hormone signaling pathways together with training mediated activation of transcriptional response of muscle burden (ATPase gene family-e.g., ATP5, ubiquinone gene family-e.g., NDUFA3, hyaluronic maintain pathways-e.g., CD44) demonstrate the impact of the racing training regime on musculoskeletal system in young developing horses.