Comparative Transcriptomic Profiling in Ovarian Tissues of Lohmann Hens and Chengkou Mountain Chicken

Background: As a crucial economic characteristic and a major indicator of reproductive performance in layers, egg production is controlled by a series of complex regulatory heredity basis. In particular, the interacting regulatory function between noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) and coding RNA plays important roles in regulating laying performance. Methods: In this study, the RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of ovarian tissues from Lohmann hens (n = 3) and Chengkou Mountain chicken (n = 3) under the laying peak period was performed to identify RNA transcriptional differences among different laying-performance populations. Results: Results showed that the expression level of 303 mRNAs, 68 long ncRNAs (lncRNAs), 533 circular RNAs (circRNAs), and 79 microRNAs (miRNAs) was significantly different among the groups. Functional enrichment analysis of these differentially expressed (DE) mRNAs revealed that the laying process was implicated in numerous significantly enriched pathways (p < 0.05), such as the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, steroid hormone biosynthesis, and calcium-signaling pathway. Furthermore, the lncRNA/circRNA-miRNA-mRNA regulatory networks related to the regulation of laying performance were constructed. Some randomly selective DE RNAs were verified by Real Time Quantitative (RT-qRCR), indicating that the bioinformatics analysis results of RNA-seq data were credible. Conclusions: This study could increase our understanding of the heredity basis of transcriptome in the laying performance of chicken.