Systematic analysis of tRNA-derived small RNAs in intrauterine growth retardation and normal pig skeletal muscle

tRFs (tRNA-derived small fragments) are a new class of small non-coding RNAs reported in recent years, with biological functions similar to microRNAs. In this study, we used next-generation sequencing to analyze the expression profile of tRFs in intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) pigs and normal pig longissimus dorsi muscle (LDM). The results showed that a total of 585 tRFs were identified in the longissimus dorsi of pigs, of which 445 tRFs were co-expressed in IUGR pigs and normal pigs, and 38 tRFs were expressed alone in IUGR pig LDM. Further functional enrichment analysis of differential tRFs target genes found that skeletal muscle cell differentiation, protein ubiquitination, protein polyubiquitination, ubiquitin-protein transferase activity, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, Ubiquitin mediated proteolysis, etc. are mainly involved in skeletal muscle development and muscle protein synthesis. Signal pathways closely related to decomposition. Our results provide a reference for further study of the function of porcine tRFs and enrichment of the regulatory network of porcine skeletal muscle development.