Comparative analysis of the daily brain transcriptomes of Asian particolored bat

Abstract

Daily rhythms are found in almost all organisms, and they comprise one of the most basic characteristics of living things. Daily rhythms are generated and mainly regulated by circadian clock. Bats have attracted interest from researchers because of their unique biological characteristics. However, little is known about the molecular underpinnings of daily rhythms in bats. In this study, we used RNA-Seq to uncover the daily rhythms of gene expression in the brains of Asian particolored bats over the 24-h day. Accordingly, four collected time points corresponding to four biological states, rest, sleep, wakefulness, and active, were selected. Several groups of genes with different expression levels in these four states were obtained suggested that different physiological processes were active at various biological states, including drug metabolism, signaling pathways, and the circadian rhythm. Furthermore, downstream analysis of all differentially expressed genes in these four states suggested that groups of genes showed daily rhythms in the bat brain. Especially for Per1, an important circadian clock gene was identified with rhythmic expression in the brain of Asian particolored bat. In summary, our study provides an overview of the brain transcriptomic differences in different physiological states over a 24-h cycle.