Spatial and Temporal Expression Characteristics of the HBB Gene Family in Six Different Pig Breeds

beta-Thalassemia is one of the most prevalent inherited diseases in China. It is important to develop animal models to accurately simulate human beta-thalassemia and there are unique advantages to studying beta-thalassemia in pigs. However, there are only few reports on the systematic analysis of the beta-thalassemia-related genes and their expression pattern in pigs so far. Therefore, in this study, we firstly predicted 11 porcine hemoglobin-encoding genes and found that there was no HBG gene in pigs, indicating that the globin switches might not exist in pigs. A new hemoglobin-encoding gene, 'HBB-like', was found in pigs, which showed high conservation in its amino sequences between pigs and humans. Then, we studied the evolutionary relationship of hemoglobin-encoding genes in human, pig and mouse. The results showed that the beta-chain structure of pig and human was highly similar. In addition, we analyzed the hemoglobin-encoding gene expressions by using the iswine database and qPCR. Our results showed significant differences in the spatiotemporal expression patterns among the four genes (HBA, HBB, HBB-like and HBE) in three developmental stages of six different pig breeds. Our study provides an important theoretical basis for further construction of a gene-edited beta-thalassemia miniature pig model to assess beta--thalassemia treatments.

Automated summary

In this study, the researchers investigated the expression patterns of beta-thalassemia-related genes in pigs and their evolutionary relationship with humans and mice. They discovered a new hemoglobin-encoding gene in pigs and observed high structural similarity between the beta-chains of pigs and humans. The study also revealed significant differences in the spatiotemporal expression patterns of four genes among different pig breeds. These findings provide a valuable foundation for the development of a gene-edited beta-thalassemia miniature pig model and the evaluation of beta-thalassemia treatments.