National Natural Science Foundation of China (31660654) - Screening and identification of differentially expressed genes and miRNAs in chicken meat flavor traits

Postnatal intramuscular fat deposition is influenced by the formation and number of adipocytes in embryonic muscle, and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in intramuscular fat (IMF) deposition. In this study, RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to construct the lncRNA and mRNA expression profiles of the breast and leg muscles of Rose-crown (RC) and Cobb broiler (CB) chicken embryos. There are 13,180 novel lncRNAs, 1,100 annotated lncRNAs and 30,252 mRNAs were identified from four tissues expression profiles. Biological analysis software was used to obtain 96 and 42 differentially expressed lncRNAs between RCB and CBB, and between RCL and CBL, respectively. The differential expression of lncRNAs that may be involved in IMF metabolism in chickens was predicted, such as lncRNA-ENSGALT00000046546, and its target gene was predicted to be AGPAT2.This study identified lncRNAs potentially involved in IMF deposition in chickens and will facilitate further discoveries to unravel lncRNA functions in early chicken embryo development.