Snail家族基因功能研究进展

Snail家族基因编码具有锌指结构的转录因子,通过结合下游基因参与了多个生理水平的调控,在上皮-间质转化、胚胎发育、免疫调节、癌细胞迁移等方面具有广泛的生物学功能。Snail家族基因参与了脂肪的生成和脂代谢过程,同时也是肌生成决定因子(MyoD)的下游靶基因,也可能参与了肌肉发育调控。因此,Snail家族基因在脂肪生成、肌肉发育及脂代谢等方面发挥了重要作用,是影响哺乳动物特别是农业动物产肉性能和肉品质的一类重要候选功能基因。作者介绍了Snail家族基因及其蛋白结构和基本生物学功能,简述了Snail家族参与Wnt/β-catenin、Notch 等信号通路的调控作用方式,总结了Snail家族基因在哺乳动物脂肪生成和肌肉发育中的作用和调控方式。然而,目前关于Snail家族基因在协同参与哺乳动物脂肪生成和肌肉发育中扮演的角色仍待深入研究。另一方面,一般认为发挥转录抑制作用的Snail家族近年来也被发现具有转录激活作用,这种作用是如何实现的仍未知。因此,Snail家族基因在调控动物脂肪生成和肌肉发育过程中的协同作用、脂肪生成和脂肪水解过程的动态调控及其转录激活作用的发挥是今后研究的方向,为解析Snail家族基因在肉质性状形成过程中的遗传调控机理奠定基础。

Research Progress in Function of Snail Family Genes

Snail family genes encode transcription factors with zinc finger structure,which participate in many physiological levels by combining downstream genes,and have a wide range of biological functions in epithelial-mesenchymal transformation,embryonic development,immune regulation,cancer cell migration and so on.Snail family genes are involved in the process of fat production and fat metabolism.At the same time,they are also the downstream target genes of myogenesis determinant (MyoD),and may also be involved in the regulation of muscle development.Therefore,Snail family genes play an important role in adipogenesis,muscle development and lipid metabolism,and they are important candidate functional genes affecting meat production performance and meat quality of mammals,especially agricultural animals.The author introduces the structure and basic biological function of Snail family genes,briefly describes the regulation mode of Snail family involved in Wnt/β-catenin,Notch and other signal pathways,and summarizes the role and regulation mode of Snail family genes in mammalian adipogenesis and muscle development.However,the role of Snail family genes in mammalian adipogenesis and muscle development remains to be further studied.On the other hand,it is generally believed that the Snail family,which plays a role of transcriptional inhibition,has also been found to have transcriptional activation in recent years,but how to achieve this effect is still unknown.Therefore,the future research direction is the synergism of Snail family genes in the regulation of animal adipogenesis and muscle development,the dynamic regulation of adipogenesis and fat hydrolysis and their transcriptional activation.This review lays a foundation for analyzing the genetic regulation mechanism of Snail family genes in the formation of meat quality traits.