Identification and expression analysis of the β-defensin genes in the goat small intestine

In this study, we identified a total of 50 β-defensins from the goat genome, including 48 functional genes and 2 pseudogenes. Cross-species genomic and evolutionary analyses showed that all of the β-defensins in goat chromosomes 8, 13 and 23 present one-to-one orthologous relationships to their sheep and cattle counterparts, whereas some β-defensin genes in goat chromosome 27 are goat-specific. Moreover, we observed that some duplicated genes in goat chromosome 27 may be derived from gene copy number variation, and the annotation of sheep and cattle β-defensins appears to be incomplete in the genome. Importantly, real-time PCR analysis showed that 17 β-defensins are expressed in the small intestine with abundant cBD1s expression. These findings significant increased our knowledge of ruminant β-defensin and provided useful information for genetic studies, as well as providing a foundation for future research exploring the role of defensins in the immune response.PMID:34274482 | DOI:10.1016/j.gene.2021.145846

Source: Gene - July 18, 2021 Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Long Zhang Haihong Xiao Jian Huang Linghua Ouyang Siming Li Yanqiang Tang Source Type: research