Peer Review #1 of "Integrative analysis of Iso-Seq and RNA-seq data reveals transcriptome complexity and differentially expressed transcripts in sheep tail fat (v0.2)"

BackgroundNowadays, both customers and producers prefer thin-tailed fat sheep.To effectively breed for this phenotype, it is important to identify candidate genes and uncover the genetic mechanism related to tail fat deposition in sheep.Accumulating evidence suggesting that post-transcriptional modification events of precursor-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA), including alternative splicing (AS) and alternative polyadenylation (APA), may regulate tail fat deposition in sheep.Differentially expressed transcripts (DETs) analysis is a way to identify candidate genes related to tail fat deposition.However, due to the technological limitation, post-transcriptional modification events in the tail fat of sheep and DETs between thin-tailed and fat-tailed sheep remains unclear. MethodsIn the present study, we applied pooled PacBio isoform sequencing (Iso-Seq) to generate transcriptomic data of tail fat tissue from six sheep (three thin-tailed sheep and three fat-tailed sheep).By comparing with reference genome, potential gene loci and novel transcripts were identified.Post-transcriptional modification events, including AS and APA, and lncRNA in sheep tail fat were uncovered using pooled Iso-Seq data.Combining Iso-Seq data with and six RNAsequencing (RNA-Seq) data, DETs between thin-and fat-tailed sheep were identified.Protein