Preliminary Comparison of Skin Transcriptome From Sheep With Different Wool Fibre Diameters

The study aimed to compare the skin transcriptomes of sheep with different wool fibre diameters (FD) to identify key genes affecting FD. Using RNA-Seq technology, researchers analyzed three sheep with fine wool (FD <21.0 μm) and three with coarse wool (FD >27.0 μm), obtaining 28,607,228 bp of clean sequence data. They found 19,914 mRNA transcripts expressed, with 467 genes significantly differentially expressed between the two groups. Notably, genes involved in lipid metabolism, skin development, and immune function were enriched, suggesting these processes play a role in wool FD. The study highlighted lipid metabolism as a key factor, with a strong correlation (0.999) between mRNA expression levels from qPCR and RNA-Seq data. These findings provided insights into wool follicle metabolism and may have implications for human hair follicle studies.