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Updated: Jun 22, 2026
Quantification of Circulating Pig-Specific DNA in the Blood of a Xenotransplantation Model
Published on: September 22, 2020
Molecular cloning and expression profile analysis of porcine TCAP gene
Hunjun Cheng1, Xuewen Xu, Shuhong Zhao
1Key Laboratory of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Swine Genetics and Breeding of Ministry of Agriculture, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
The gradually discovered sarcomeric proteins play important roles for structural integrity and signal transduction of sarcomere during myofibril genesis. TCAP (also described as telethonin, T-cap), one of the sarcomeric protein genes, is regulated developmentally. In this study, we reported the molecular characteristics of porcine TCAP gene. A 979 bp TCAP cDNA nucleotide sequence was obtained in pig and the deduced amino acid sequence had 92 and 91% identity to those of human and mouse homologous genes, respectively. One SNP was discovered and the allele frequency analysis showed that G allele frequency was low among 221 unrelated pigs from seven breeds. The tissue distribution patterns revealed that TCAP mRNA was expressed abundantly in skeletal and heart muscle tissue. Real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) results displayed TCAP mRNA was up-regulated in both Tongcheng and Landrace pigs during prenatal skeletal muscle development stages. This study suggested that TCAP gene might be a prospective candidate gene affecting muscle mass and meat quality traits in the pig, and also implicated the possible significance of TCAP on sarcomere assembly.
