Expression data from longissimus dorsi muscle of Meishan pigs

The skeletal muscle growth and development is a very complicated but precisely regulated process with interwoven molecular mechanisms. Skeletal muscle is a very heterogeneous tissue that is made up of a large variety of functionally diverse fiber types. Muscle mass is therefore largely determined by the number and size of those fibres. These fibre characteristics are determined by hyperplasia before birth and by hypertrophy after. Around 65 dpc and three postnatal stages (newborn, 3 days; young, 60 days; and mature, 120 days) are key time points in swine skeletal muscle growth and development. We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression underlying porcine skeletal muscle growth and development. Porcine longissimus dorsi muscles were selected at four stages of development for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We sought to investigate the global gene expression patterns accompanying the skeletal muscle development. To that end, we selected longissimus dorsi muscles at four time-points: 65 days post coitus, 3 days, 60 days and 120 days afterbirth.