In PLOS One, Korean researchers compare gene expression profiles in uterine endometrium tissue from pregnant pigs across different points in gestation. Using GeneChip Porcine microarrays, the team tested three pregnant pigs per time point at days 12, 15, 30, 60, 90, or 114 of pregnancy. Along with almost 7,000 genes that were differentially expressed after day 12 of pregnancy, the study's authors identified groups of genes with expression patterns that cluster with one another as well as genes at the center of such expression networks. They argue that "diverse patterns of stage-specific gene expression and network connections may play a critical role in endometrial remodeling and in placental and fetal development to establish and maintenance of pregnancy in pigs."
A team from China tracks transcriptome profiles in gonadal tissue from a type of teleost fish called the Japanese flounder. As they report in PLOS One, the researchers decided to tackle to problem of sterility in some double haploid flounders by doing RNA sequencing on gonad tissue samples from a sterile and fertile double haploid Japanese flounder fish, generating tens of thousands of transcript contigs. By comparing gene expression profiles in tissues from sterile and fertile fish, they uncovered more than 490 genes showing enhanced expression in gonadal tissue from sterile fish, along with 733 genes found at lower-than-usual levels in the gonads of these fish. "Our aim was to screen for the major genes that cause sterility in the [double haploid] flounder," the authors note, "and thus provide a molecular basis for an intensive study of oocyte maturation processes in teleosts."
Researchers from Spain and elsewhere compared the genomes of Mycobacterium bovis and M. caprae — members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex — for a study appearing in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The team sequenced three M. bovis field isolates and one M. caprae isolate, producing a resource to explore the genomic, phylogenetics, and proteomic patterns in the bugs, which can cause tuberculosis in animals and zoonotic infections of humans. The analysis also offered clues to differences in transmission and infection patterns associated with M. bovis strains originally isolated from cattle or wild boar.