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  3. Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Provides Insight into Skeletal Muscle Evolution during the Selection of Muscle Characteristics

Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Provides Insight into Skeletal Muscle Evolution during the Selection of Muscle Characteristics

  • Adv Sci (Weinh). 2023 Oct 23:e2305080. doi: 10.1002/advs.202305080.
Doudou Xu 1,  Boyang Wan 1,  Kai Qiu 1,  Yubo Wang 1,  Xin Zhang 1 2,  Ning Jiao 1,  Enfa Yan 1,  Jiangwei Wu 3,  Run Yu 4,  Shuai Gao 5,  Min Du 6,  Chousheng Liu 7,  Mingzhou Li 8,  Guoping Fan 9,  Jingdong Yin 1 2
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 State Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition and feeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China.
  • 2 Molecular Design Breeding Frontier Science Center of the Ministry of Education, Beijing, China.
  • 3 Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Shaanxi Province, College of Animal Science and Technology, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, China.
  • 4 Beijing National Day School, Beijing, 100039, China.
  • 5 Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China.
  • 6 Nutrigenomics and Growth Biology Laboratory, Department of Animal Sciences and School of Molecular Bioscience, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164, USA.
  • 7 National Animal Husbandry Service, Beijing, 100125, China.
  • 8 Institute of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, 625014, China.
  • 9 Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
PMID: 37870215 DOI: 10.1002/advs.202305080
Abstract

Skeletal muscle comprises a large, heterogeneous assortment of cell populations that interact to maintain muscle homeostasis, but little is known about the mechanism that controls myogenic development in response to artificial selection. Different pig (Sus scrofa) breeds exhibit distinct muscle phenotypes resulting from domestication and selective breeding. Using unbiased single-cell transcriptomic sequencing analysis (scRNA-seq), the impact of artificial selection on cell profiles is investigated in neonatal skeletal muscle of pigs. This work provides panoramic muscle-resident cell profiles and identifies novel and breed-specific cells, mapping them on pseudotime trajectories. Artificial selection has elicited significant changes in muscle-resident cell profiles, while conserving signs of generational environmental challenges. These results suggest that fibro-adipogenic progenitors serve as a cellular interaction hub and that specific transcription factors identified here may serve as candidate target regulons for the pursuit of a specific muscle phenotype. Furthermore, a cross-species comparison of humans, mice, and pigs illustrates the conservation and divergence of mammalian muscle ontology. The findings of this study reveal shifts in cellular heterogeneity, novel cell subpopulations, and their interactions that may greatly facilitate the understanding of the mechanism underlying divergent muscle phenotypes arising from artificial selection.

Keywords

fibro-adipogenic progenitors; muscle characteristics; neonatal myogenesis; pigs, single-cell RNA-sequencing.

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