ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Livestock Genomics
This article is part of the Research TopicInsights in Livestock GenomicsView all 16 articles
Transcriptome-wide m6A landscape across diverse porcine tissues revealed by Nanopore direct RNA sequencing
Provisionally accepted
- Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, China
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N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is the most prevalent internal RNA modification in eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA). Pigs are valuable not only as a source of meat protein but also as ideal animal models for studying human diseases. To date, m6A has not been systematically mapped in a body-wide survey of porcine tissues. In this study, we used direct RNA sequencing data of 39 sow samples (from 23 tissues) and 7 fetal samples (from 7 tissues) to identify m6A modifications and alternative splicing (AS) events. In total, we identified 60,823 transcripts, including 27,823 novel isoforms. The mean poly(A) tail length varied markedly among tissues, ranging from 48 to 101 nt. A total of 343,951 m6A sites were identified, with sow and fetal samples averaging 80,336 and 92,476 sites, respectively. The number of m6A sites varied across different samples, ranging from 27,830 to 118,042. The brain samples displayed the most pronounced region-specific m6A pattern; different anatomical locations within the same tissue exhibited high m6A heterogeneity. Overall, m6A methylation levels were positively correlated with transcript expression levels; integrative analyses further supported an association between m6A modification and AS. Our findings provide novel insights that enhance our understanding of the regulatory complexity of the transcriptome and epitranscriptome in pigs.
Keywords: pig, direct RNA sequencing, Novel transcripts, m6A modification, Alternative Splicing
Received: 15 Oct 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xing, Yang, Liao, Ding, Chen, Yin and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yuyun Xing, xingyuyun9@hotmail.com
Qiang Yang, yangqiang@jxau.edu.cn
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