Comprehensive Transcriptome Sequencing Analysis of Hirudinaria manillensis in Different Growth Periods

Huiquan Shan; Ke Ren; Jiasheng Liu; Saif Ur Rehman; Xiuying Yan; Xiaocong Ma; Yalin Zheng; Tong Feng; Xiaobo Wang; Zhipeng Li; Weiguan Zhou; Chen Chuang; Mingkun Liang; Jinghui Zheng; Qingyou Liu

doi:10.3389/fphys.2022.897458

Comprehensive Transcriptome Sequencing Analysis of Hirudinaria manillensis in Different Growth Periods

Front Physiol. 2022 May 25:13:897458. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.897458. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Huiquan Shan^{1

2}, Ke Ren³, Jiasheng Liu³, Saif Ur Rehman², Xiuying Yan², Xiaocong Ma³, Yalin Zheng², Tong Feng², Xiaobo Wang², Zhipeng Li², Weiguan Zhou⁴, Chen Chuang⁵, Mingkun Liang³, Jinghui Zheng³, Qingyou Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Molecular Design and Precise Breeding, School of Life Science and Engineering, Foshan University, Foshan, China.
² State Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro- Bioresources, Guangxi University, Nanning, China.
³ Department of Cardiology, Ruikang Hospital Affiliated to Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, China.
⁴ THAI Natural Hirudin Co., Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand.
⁵ Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, China.

Abstract

Medical leeches are widely been used in biochemical and clinical medical studies, helping to restore blood circulation to grafted or severely injured tissue. Mostly, adult leeches are being used in the traditional pharmacopeia, but the gene expression profiling of leeches in different growth periods is not well-reported. So, in this study, we used transcriptome analysis to analyze the comparative gene expression patterns of Hirudinaria manillensis (H. manillensis) in different growth periods, including larval, young, and adult stages. We constructed 24 cDNA libraries from H. manillensis larval, young, and adult stages, and about 54,639,118 sequences were generated, 18,106 mRNA transcripts of which 958 novel mRNAs and 491 lncRNAs were also assembled as well. Furthermore, the results of Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses revealed that the differentially upregulated genes from the larval to adult stages were enriched in pathways such as cilium, myofibril, contractile fiber, cytoskeleton proteins, dilated cardiomyopathy, adrenergic signaling in cardiomyocytes, etc. Moreover, in the adult stages, a significant increase in the expression of the Hirudin-HM (HIRM2) genes was detected. In addition, our comparative transcriptome profiling data from different growth stages of H. manillensis also identified a large number of DEGs and DElncRNAs which were tentatively found to be associated with the growth of H. manillensis; as it grew, the muscle-related gene expression increased, while the lipid metabolism and need for stimulation and nutrition-related genes decreased. Similarly, the higher expression of HIRM2 might attribute to the high expression of protein disulfide isomerase gene family (PDI) family genes in adulthood, which provides an important clue that why adult leeches rather than young leeches are widely used in clinical therapeutics and traditional Chinese medicine.

Keywords: DEGs (differentially expressed genes); Hirudinaria manillensis; comprehensive transcription analysis; different growth periods; time series analysis.