Novel porcine housekeeping genes for real-time RT-PCR experiments normalization in adipose tissue: Assessment of leptin mRNA quantity in different pig breeds

The main function of adipose tissue is energy storage and production of various cytokines and hormones, such as leptin. Leptin is a protein hormone synthesized and secreted by adipose tissue. The expression of leptin is strongly dependent on growth and luteinizing hormones, which play an important role in the brain-pituitary axis. The concentration of leptin in blood plasma increases with age and obesity and is associated with the level of leptin mRNA in adipose tissue. Selection of appropriate internal control gene (ICG) for normalization of quantitative PCR data for genes of interest is critical for interpretation of results. The estimation of leptin mRNA is important in the research on regulation of feed intake and metabolic and energy balance. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the stability of mRNA expression for a number of candidate housekeeping genes in the porcine backfat tissue across different breeds. In our study we used a freeware computer program (geNorm) to evaluate the most stable among eight ICG genes (β-actin, hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase 1, TATA binding protein, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, ornithine decarboxylase antizyme 1, 60S ribosomal protein L27, 40S ribosomal protein S29, eukaryotic elongation factor (1) in 90 mRNA samples of backfat tissue. In the study we used three breeds differing in muscling: Polish Large White (n = 30), Polish Landrace (n = 30) and Pietrain (n = 30). The results showed that the three most stable genes were ornithine decarboxylase antizyme 1 (OAZ1), 60S ribosomal protein L27 (RPL27) and β-actin (M = 0.579, 0.602 and 0.607, respectively). In order to evaluate the abundance of leptin mRNA, the two most stable genes were used. The highest level of mRNA expression was obtained for PL and the lowest for Pietrain pigs. These results confirmed previous studies which showed that pigs with lean carcass were characterized by a lower level of leptin transcript compared to pigs with large fat deposit. Moreover, we analyzed relationship between C3469T Lep polymorphism and level of leptin mRNA, but did not find significant associations. Our study provides a new panel of housekeeping genes for normalization of the expression of a gene of interest in adipose tissue.