Jingyi Mao, Junmin He, Yifan Ren, Xue Li, Cunming Yang, Guifen Liu, Guoping Zhang, Chen Wei, Wenhao Zhang, Ming Wang, Fumei Nie, Kechuan Tian, Xixia Huang
BACKGROUND: The Jining grey goat is a renowned local goat breed in China that has exceptional reproductive performance; thereby, it serves as an ideal animal model for studying prolificacy in goats. Recent research on the reproductive traits of Jining grey goats has focused primarily on variations in the expression of key genes, hormone regulatory mechanisms, and breeding techniques, with the aim of enhancing reproductive performance through molecular marker-assisted breeding. METHODS: In this study, 8 healthy adult female Jining grey goats of similar age and weight were selected. Ovarian and uterine tissues were collected from Jining grey goats in the high litter size group (HL, high size ≥ 3 in three consecutive litters, n = 4) and the low litter size group (LL, litter size = 1 in three consecutive litters, n = 4) for transcriptome sequencing. Bioinformatics analysis was conducted to investigate key regulatory pathways and candidate genes in ovarian and uterine tissues. Ultimately, 5 pathways (cAMP signalling pathway, neuroactive ligand‒receptor interaction, ABC transporters, cytokine‒cytokine receptor interaction and metabolic pathways) and 10 candidate genes (3BHSD, CLSTN2, BMP5, DRD1, CXCL14, CFAP43, WNT10B, ENO4, GABRA1 and the DNAH1 gene) were revealed to be associated with multiple births in Jining grey goats. RT‒qPCR was used to verify the sequencing results, and the relative expression levels of the 10 candidate genes in different tissues were compared. Among them, 3BHSD, CLSTN2, and GABRA1 were found to be closely related to prolificacy in the Jining grey goat. CONCLUSION: In this study, key regulatory pathways and candidate genes influencing the prolificacy of Jining Grey goats were investigated through transcriptome analysis, providing in-depth insights into the molecular mechanisms through which the expression of genes related to prolificacy in different tissues affects reproductive performance. These findings provide a theoretical foundation and reference for the selective breeding of Jining grey goats.