Comparative Transcriptome Analysis Of Tongue Tip In Yak And Cow

There’re copious amounts of taste buds on mammals’ tongue tips and mammals produce taste through chemical reactions of intake substances with taste receptor cells located on taste buds.Yak is a key ruminant in the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau.The research on yak’s taste mechanism as well as its taste receptors’ function would help us reveal taste sensing system’s effect upon yak’s foraging and grazing behavior.Meanwhie,it could deep our understanding of plateau indigenous animals’ adaptation and help us develop feed as well.We sequenced transcriptomes of yak and cow’s tongue tips and comparativly analyzed their taste differences based on reference genomes.We identified 1703 differential expression genes(DEGs).1090 DEGs is up-regulated in cow’s tongue tip while 613 DEGs is up-regulated in yak’s.We then carried out GO enrichment analysis and KEGG enrichment analysis on these DEGs.The results show that cow’s accessory proteins of their bitter and umami receptors have significant upregulation together with 1 vital coupled receptor which participate in several taste signaling pathways.In addition,we find cow’s DEGs are significantly enriched in KEGG pathways of ‘Proteasome’ and ‘Ribosome’ which could be explained by more active protein synthesis.As for yaks’ DEGs,we only find upregulation in accessory proteins of sweet and bitter taste which imply that yak’s taste might experience a degeneration.