Application of RNA-Seq Technology in the Field of Animal Biotechnology

RNA-Seq was initially used mainly for human studies. Improvement of sequencing chemistry enabled the study of transcriptome by RNA-Seq in a comprehensive manner and at a much lower cost compared to traditional Sanger sequencing-based technologies and currently RNA-Seq is used by animal geneticists around the world. Other than the comprehensive gene expression analysis, RNA-Seq technology can be utilized to map the 5’ and 3’ boundaries and introns of genes, discover new splice variants, find new exons, study allele-specific expression, identify and annotate coding SNP, discover novel non-coding RNAs and also to study in depth the variants of non-coding RNA. Sequence reads obtained by RNA-Seq can be utilized to build de novo gene models in species with fewer available genomic resources. In summary RNA-Seq provides a better understanding of the regulation of transcription and associated networks, and it will help to improve animal biotechnology techniques.