Recently, a paper entitled “Estrogen-mediated oar-miR-485-5p targets PPP1R13B to regulate myoblast proliferation in sheep” has been published by the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules. The research team from the Institute of animal science of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IAS, CAAS) has revealed the regulation of myogenic cells by estrogen in sheep and elucidation of the molecular mechanism of estrogen regulation of myoblast proliferation.

As an important endocrine organ in female animals, ovaries can participate in physiological functions by secreting a variety of steroid hormones. Estrogen is the main hormone it secretes, and some studies have shown that muscle mass and strength were reduced in sheep after ovary removal, but the specific molecular mechanisms and the complex interactions between microRNAs (miRNAs) and genes are still unclear.

In this study, Sunit sheep were studied and divided into ovariectomy and not-ovariectomy group. A total of 178 differentially expressed mRNA-miRNA pairs were obtained from the RNA-seq result of longissimus dorsi tissue samples of ovariectomy and not-ovariectomy groups of Sunit sheep, and the key gene PPP1R13B differentially expressed between the two groups was screened. It was found that the expression of the PPP1R13B gene could promote the proliferation of myoblast, and the addition of a certain concentration of estradiol in vitro could mediate the regulation of PPP1R13B gene expression and promote the proliferation of myoblast in sheep.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32172704), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program of China (CAAS-ZDRW202106 and ASTIP-IAS13), and the China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (CARS‐38).

More details are available on the links bellow: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0141813023008814

Figure the Estrogen-acting pathway in sheep skeletal muscle