Spatiotemporal-specific lncRNAs in the brain, colon, liver and lung of macaque during development

Abstract

Genome-wide expression profiling during development provides useful information to uncover the potential molecular mechanisms of development in mammals. Recent studies have revealed that a subset of lncRNAs can regulate major biological processes during development. Here, we sequenced four tissues, including brain, colon, liver and lung, using RNA-seq across three developmental stages (early, middle and late stage), and then constructed genome-wide expression profiles during macaque development. In each tissue, we identified developmental time-specific lncRNA and mRNA clusters that displayed diverse expression alteration patterns, including a gradual increase, a gradual decrease, or a reversal of expression. These lncRNAs showed more specific functional associations with their corresponding tissues relative to the developmental time-specific mRNAs. Furthermore, we identified 20 spatiotemporal-specific co-modules including 101 lncRNAs and 609 mRNAs distributed at different developmental stages in different tissues. Our findings suggested that lncRNAs could play critical roles in the development of macaques through close cooperation with mRNAs. Finally, we predicted the functions of the spatiotemporal-specific lncRNAs by their spatiotemporal cooperation with mRNAs and further validated our findings using gene knockdown data of mouse. Our study reveals the spatiotemporal characteristics of lncRNAs and provides a functional map of the spatiotemporal-specific lncRNAs during the development of macaques.