Identification of a novel antisense long non-coding RNA PLA2G16-AS that regulates the expression of PLA2G16 in pigs

Natural antisense transcripts (NATs) are widely present in mammalian genomes and act as pivotal regulator molecules to control gene expression. However, studies on the NATs of pigs are relatively rare. Here, we identified a novel antisense transcript, designated PLA2G16-AS, transcribed from the phospholipase A2 group XVI locus (PLA2G16) in the porcine genome, which is a well-known regulatory molecule of fat deposition. PLA2G16-AS and PLA2G16 were dominantly expressed in porcine adipose tissue, and were differentially expressed between Tibetan pigs and Rongchang pigs. In addition, PLA2G16-AS has a weak sequence conservation among different vertebrates. PLA2G16-AS was also shown to form an RNA-RNA duplex with PLA2G16, and to regulate PLA2G16 expression at the mRNA level. Moreover, the overexpression of PLA2G16-AS increased the stability of PLA2G16 mRNA in porcine cells. We envision that our findings of a NAT for a regulatory gene associated with lipolysis might further our understanding of the molecular regulation of fat deposition.