Insight into bovine (Bos indicus) spermatozoal whole transcriptome profile

Mature spermatozoa harbor both coding and non-coding type of RNAs which regulates spermatogenesis, fertilization and early development. Characterization of bovine sperm transcriptome can provide more insight into the molecular mechanisms involved in these processes. Here, we have analyzed whole transcriptome profile of Bos indicus spermatozoa to access the global RNA expression. RNA-Seq analysis identified 14,306 genes expressed with FPKM >0, while 405 genes expressed when threshold increased to FPKM >5. Functional annotations showed that sperm transcripts were associated with molecular processes (translation, ribosomal small and large subunit assembly) and cellular components (cytosolic small and large ribosomal subunit and membranes) related to known sperm functions at fertilization and spermatogenesis. The RNA-Seq data was validated using droplet digital PCR where both highly abundant gene viz. RN7SL1 and less abundant gene viz. ZFP280B were validated. This study may provide future directions in reproductive biology of Bos indicus. •Characterization of the whole transcriptome of the Bos indicus sperms using RNA-Seq approach was done.•Ontology analysis has shown that the highly abundant spermatozoal transcript represent biological process like translation, ribosomal subunit assembly, intracellular sequestering of iron ion, predominantly.•To evaluate concordance in gene expression between RNA-seq and ddPCR, expression correlation between normalized log transformed ddPCR copies/μl values and RNA-seq expression values (RPKM) were checked and validated.