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Comparative Study
. 2020 Apr 29;16(1):123.
doi: 10.1186/s12917-020-02339-x.

Milk exosome-derived miRNAs from water buffalo are implicated in immune response and metabolism process

Zujing Chen  1   2 , Yueqin Xie  3 , Junyi Luo  3 , Ting Chen  1   3 , Qianyun Xi  1   3 , Yongliang Zhang  4   5 , Jiajie Sun  4   5
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Milk exosome-derived miRNAs from water buffalo are implicated in immune response and metabolism process

Zujing Chen et al. BMC Vet Res. .

Abstract

Background: Buffalo milk is rich in various nutritional components and bioactive substances that provide more essential health benefits to human body. Recently, exosome identified in the breast milk has been reported as a neotype nutrient and can mediate intercellular communication with exosomal miRNAs. In the present study, we therefore hypothesized that exosome-derived miRNAs from buffalo milk would play the potential physiological importance of consumption of buffalo milk.

Results: We isolated exosomes from buffalo and cow milk samples that were obtained at mid-lactation period, and the exosomal miRNA profiles were then generated using miRNA-seq. In addition, miRNAomes of pig, human and panda milk exosomes were downloaded from GEO database. Finally, a total of 27 milk exosomal miRNA profiles that included 4 buffalo, 4 cow, 8 pig, 4 human and 7 panda were analyzed using the miRDeep2 program. A total of 558 unique miRNA candidates existed across all species, and the top 10 highly expressed miRNA were evolutionarily conserved across multiple species. Functional analysis revealed that these milk enriched miRNAs targeted 400 putative sites to modulate disease resistance, immune responsiveness and basic metabolism events. In addition, a total of 32 miRNAs in buffalo milk were significantly up-regulated compared with non-buffalo milks, while 16 were significantly down-regulated. Of interest, functional analysis showed that up-regulated miRNAs were mainly related to host metabolism processes, while the predicted functions of down-regulated miRNAs were enriched in immune response.

Conclusion: In this study, we explored the exosomal miRNAome differences between milks of different animals, expanding the theoretical basis for potential applications of the miRNA-containing vesicles.

Keywords: Buffalo milk; Cell-cell communication; Exosomal miRNA; Immune and metabolism.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Principal component analysis of milk exosomal miRNAs between different species. The red, green, blue, purple and magenta represented for the expression of buffalo, cow, pig, human and panda milk exosomal miRNAome, respectively
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Differently up-regulated (a) and down-regulated (b) exosomal miRNAs between buffalo and non-buffalo milks. B_cow, B_pig, B_human and B_panda represented for the significantly expressed miRNAs between buffalo and cow, pig, human, panda, respectively
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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