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  • Allele-specific expression ...
    Wang, Yu; Gao, Shan; Zhao, Yue; Chen, Wei-Huang; Shao, Jun-Jie; Wang, Ni-Ni; Li, Ming; Zhou, Guang-Xian; Wang, Lei; Shen, Wen-Jing; Xu, Jing-Tao; Deng, Wei-Dong; Wang, Wen; Chen, Yu-Lin; Jiang, Yu

    Dōngwùxué yánjiū, 07/2019, Volume: 40, Issue: 4
    Journal Article

    Divergence of gene expression and alternative splicing is a crucial driving force in the evolution of species; to date, however the molecular mechanism remains unclear. Hybrids of closely related species provide a suitable model to analyze allele-specific expression (ASE) and allele-specific alternative splicing (ASS). Analysis of ASE and ASS can uncover the differences in -regulatory elements between closely related species, while eliminating interference of regulatory elements. Here, we provide a detailed characterization of ASE and ASS from 19 and 10 transcriptome datasets across five tissues from reciprocal-cross hybrids of horse×donkey (mule/hinny) and cattle×yak (dzo), respectively. Results showed that 4.8%-8.7% and 10.8%-16.7% of genes exhibited ASE and ASS, respectively. Notably, lncRNAs and pseudogenes were more likely to show ASE than protein-coding genes. In addition, genes showing ASE and ASS in mule/hinny were found to be involved in the regulation of muscle strength, whereas those of dzo were involved in high-altitude adaptation. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that exploration of genes showing ASE and ASS in hybrids of closely related species is feasible for species evolution research.