RNA editing is a posttranscriptional molecular process involved with specific nucleic modification, which can enhance the diversity of gene products. Adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I, I is read as guanosine by both splicing and translation machinery) is the main type of RNA editing in mammals, which manifested as AG (adenosine-to-guanosine) in sequence data. Here, we aimed to explore patterns of RNA editing using RNA sequencing data from skeletal muscle at four developmental stages (three fetal periods and one postnatal period) in goat. We found the occurrences of RNA editing events raised at fetal periods and declined at the postnatal period. Also, we observed distinct editing levels of AG editing across stages, and significant difference was found between postnatal period and fetal periods. AG editing patterns in newborn goats are similar to those of 45-day embryo compared with embryo at 105 days and embryo at 60 days. In this study, we found a total of 1415 significantly differential edited AG sites among four groups. Moreover, 420 sites were obviously clustered into six time-series profiles, and one profile had significant association between editing level and gene expression. Our findings provided some novel insights into understanding the molecular mechanism of muscle development in mammals.

中文翻译：

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系统分析揭示了与山羊（Capra hircus）骨骼肌发育有关的RNA编辑事件。

RNA编辑是转录后的分子过程，涉及特定的核酸修饰，可以增强基因产物的多样性。腺苷-肌苷（A-to-I，通过剪接和翻译机制均被称为鸟苷）是哺乳动物中RNA编辑的主要类型，在序列数据中表现为AG（腺苷-鸟苷）。在这里，我们旨在探索来自山羊骨骼肌四个发育阶段（三个胎儿时期和一个产后时期）的骨骼肌RNA测序数据的RNA编辑模式。我们发现RNA编辑事件的发生在胎儿期升高，而在产后期下降。此外，我们观察到了不同阶段的AG编辑的不同编辑水平，并且在产后和胎儿期之间发现了显着差异。相比于105天和60天的胚胎，新生山羊的AG编辑模式类似于45天的胚胎。在这项研究中，我们发现四组之间总共有1415个差异显着的已编辑AG位点。而且，420个位点明显地聚类为六个时间序列图谱，并且一个图谱在编辑水平和基因表达之间具有显着的关联。我们的发现为理解哺乳动物肌肉发育的分子机制提供了一些新颖的见解。