Expression dynamics and relations with nearby genes of rat transposable elements across 11 organs, 4 developmental stages and both sexes

BACKGROUND: TEs pervade mammalian genomes. However, compared with mice, fewer studies have focused on the TE expression patterns in rat, particularly the comparisons across different organs, developmental stages and sexes. In addition, TEs can influence the expression of nearby genes. The temporal and spatial influences of TEs remain unclear yet. RESULTS: To evaluate the TEs transcription patterns, we profiled their transcript levels in 11 organs for both sexes across four developmental stages of rat. The results show that most short interspersed elements (SINEs) are commonly expressed in all conditions, which are also the major TE types with commonly expression patterns. In contrast, long terminal repeats (LTRs) are more likely to exhibit specific expression patterns. The expression tendency of TEs and genes are similar in most cases. For example, few specific genes and TEs are in the liver, muscle and heart. However, TEs perform superior over genes on classing organ, which imply their higher organ specificity than genes. By associating the TEs with the closest genes in genome, we find their expression levels are correlated, independent of their distance in some cases. CONCLUSIONS: TEs sex-dependently associate with nearest genes. A gene would be associated with more than one TE. Our works can help to functionally annotate the genome and further understand the role of TEs in gene regulation. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-017-4078-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.