RESUMO
Antler growth is a unique event compared to other growth and development processes in mammals. Antlers grow extremelyfast during the rapid growth stage when growth rate peaks at 2 cm per day. Antler growth is driven by a specificendochondral ossification process in the growth center that is in the distal region of the antler tip. In this study, we usedstate-of-art RNA-seq technology to analyze the expression profiles of mRNAs and miRNAs during antler growth. Ourresults indicated that the expression levels of multiple genes involved in chondrogenesis and endochondral ossification,including Fn1, Sox9, Col2a1, Acan, Col9a1, Col11a1, Hapln1, Wwp2, Fgfr3, Comp, Sp7 and Ihh, were significantlyincreased at the rapid growth stage. Our results also indicated that there were multiple differentially expressed miRNAsinteracting with differentially expressed genes with opposite expression patterns. Furthermore, some of the miRNAs,including miR-3072-5p, miR-1600, miR-34-5p, miR-6889-5p and miR-6729-5p, simultaneously interacted with andcontrolled multiple genes involved in the process of chondrogenesis and endochondral ossification. Therefore, we established a miRNA-mRNA regulatory network by identifying miRNAs and their target genes that were differentially expressedin the antler growth centers by comparing the rapid growth stage and the initial growth stage