Transcriptional profiling of grizzly bear skeletal muscle before and during hibernation

We report transcriptional changes in grizzly bear muscle during hibernation (February) as compared to before (October). We used Gastrocnemius muscle biopsies taken during Febrary (hibernation) and the October before (activity) for mRNA extraction followed by 454, paired-end and single-end Illumina sequencing. Resulting reads were later mapped to human homologs and used for further analysis. Overall design: mRNA profiling for bear skeletal muscles using 454 and Illumina sequencing