Abstract: In order to investigate the regulation mechanism of insulin and thyroid hormone signaling pathways in brown adipose tissue (BAT) in Tupaia belangeri under cold acclimation, in the present study, transcriptome sequencing of BAT in T. belangeri between control and cold acclimation group were carried out by Illumina novaseq 6000 platform, respectively. Then the signal pathways and candidate genes related to insulin and thyroid hormone were screened out by bioinformatics analysis. The results showed that there were significant differences in the expression of 2 879 genes in cold acclimation group compared with that of control group, 1 181 were up-regulated and 1 698 were down-regulated in cold acclimation group. The results of GO analysis showed that there were 24, 28 and 55 terms were significantly enriched in cellular components, molecular functions and biological processes, respectively, and differentially expressed genes were mainly enriched in biological processes. KEGG analysis showed that the differentially expressed genes were significantly enriched in 20 pathways, and candidate genes related to insulin and thyroid hormone signaling pathways were screened out, including PDPK1, AKT2, ACACA, SLC2A4, and THRB, etc. All of the above results indicated that the T. belangeri could adapt to the cold environment by regulating genes expression in insulin and thyroid hormone pathways in BAT.

Key words: Tupaia belangeri, transcriptome, brown adipose tissue, insulin signaling pathway, thyroid hormone signaling pathway