The development of hair follicle in cashmere goats shows significant periodic change, as with mice and humans. However, for cashmere goat with double-coat, the periodic change may be due to other regulatory molecules and signal pathways. To understand the mechanism of periodic development of hair follicle, we performed a weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) to mine key genes and establish an interaction network by utilizing the NCBI public dataset. Ten coexpression modules, including 7689 protein-coding genes, were constructed by WGCNA, six of which are considered to be significantly related to the development of the hair follicle cycle. A functional enrichment analysis for each model showed that they are closely related to ECM- receptor interaction, focal adhesion, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, estrogen signaling pathway, and so on. Combined with the analysis of differential expressed genes, 12 hub genes from coexpression modules were selected as candidate markers, i.e., COL1A1, C1QTNF6, COL1A2, AQP3, KRTAP3-1, KRTAP11-1, FA2H, NDUFS5, DERL2, MRPL14, ANTKMT and XAB2, which might be applied to improve cashmere production.

The gene family with sequence similarity 13 member A (FAM13A) has recently been identified as a marker gene in insulin sensitivity and lipolysis. In this study, we first analyzed the expression patterns of this gene in different tissues of adult cattle and then constructed a phylogenetic tree based on the FAM13A amino acid sequence. This showed that subcutaneous adipose tissue had the highest expression in all tissues except lung tissue. Then we summarized the gene structure. The promoter region sequence of the gene was successfully amplified, and the −241/+54 region has been identified as the core promoter region. The core promoter region was determined by the unidirectional deletion of the 5’ flanking promoter region of the FAM13A gene. Based on the bioinformatics analysis, we examined the dual luciferase activity of the vector constructed by the mutation site, and the transcription factors ACSL1 and ASCL2 were found as transcriptional regulators of FAM13A. Moreover, electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) further validated the regulatory role of ACSL1 and ASCL2 in the regulation of FAM13A. ACSL1 and ASCL2 were finally identified as activating transcription factors. Our results provide a basis for the function of the FAM13A gene in bovine adipocytes in order to improve the deposition of fat deposition in beef cattle muscle.

Beauvericin (BEA) is an emerging mycotoxin widely detected in feeds in recent years, posing a serious threat to the physiological health of dairy cows. Current studies on the biological toxicity of BEA mainly focus on the reproductive system, while research regarding mammary gland development in dairy cows remains scarce. Therefore, we used bovine mammary alveolar cells (MAC–T) as the research object to investigate the toxic effects of BEA and its underlying mechanisms. Our results demonstrated that BEA induced cell cycle arrest; with increasing doses, BEA altered cell morphology, stretched cell membranes toward both poles and triggered cell death. Further studies revealed that BEA exposure not only promoted intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation but also induced endoplasmic reticulum stress. BEA also suppressed the expression of genes associated with milk fat synthesis, including FASN, ACSS2, FABP3, SCD, DHCR7 and INSIG1. In addition, altered phosphorylation of JAK2/STAT3 and ERK1/2 was also observed following BEA exposure. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses showed that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were significantly enriched in processes such as cell cycle, cytoskeleton organization and metabolism, which helped to characterize the toxic effects of BEA in bovine mammary epithelial cells.