Analysis of Methylation and mRNA Expression of Gene Promoter Region in the Hypothalamus of Dolang Sheep During Pubertal Initiation.

plays an important role in puberty initiation in sheep. This study aimed to discuss the correlation between different growth periods and the methylation status of cytosine-guanine dinucleotide (CpG) islands in the promoter region of the gene in the Dolang sheep's hypothalamus. In this study, the sequence of the gene promoter region in Dolang sheep was obtained by cloning and sequencing, and methyl groups of the CpG island of the gene promoter in the hypothalamus were detected by bisulfite sequencing PCR during the three periods of prepuberty, adolescence, and postpuberty in Dolang sheep. expression in the Dolang sheep's hypothalamus was detected by fluorescence quantitative PCR at three stages: prepuberty, puberty, and postpuberty. In this experiment, the 2993-bp promoter region was obtained, and it was predicted that there was a CpG island containing 15 transcription factor binding sites and 12 CpG sites, which may play a role in gene expression regulation. Overall, methylation levels increased from prepuberty to postpuberty, while expression levels decreased, indicating that expression was negatively correlated with promoter methylation levels. Variance analysis showed significant differences in the methylation status of CpG5, CpG7, and CpG9 between pre- and postpuberty ( < 0.05). Our data show that expression is increased by demethylation of promoter CpG islands, with CpG5, CpG7, and CpG9 implicated as critical regulatory sites.