BioProject

Intramuscular fat (IMF) content in pork is an important element of consumer preference, and is positively correlated with meat quality, including tenderness and juiciness. With advances in RNA sequencing technologies, transcriptome-related differences can be associated with specific traits in animals. The objective of this study was to investigate the differentially expressed genes (DEG) closely related with IMF content in porcine longissimus muscle using RNA sequencing. A total of 107 Berkshire pigs were used for IMF content measurements and significant difference between extremely high (H, n=3) and low (L, n=3) IMF content groups was found (P < 0.0001). From multi-dimensional scaling analyses, it was observed that the relationships between H and L groups were similar to each other. Here, we identified a total of 134 genes that were differentially expressed between the groups (FDR < 0.05, and FC ≥ 2). Functional analyses with DEGs revealed that the lipid metabolism (SCD and FASN) was one of the significant biological processes related with IMF content determination. In addition, we also found that DEGs related with muscle regeneration (MYOG and VEGFA) and extracellular matrix (COL1A1, COL1A2, COL5A1, COL14A1, and COL15A1) were changed between individuals with the extreme IMF contents, interestingly. These results will aid in understanding the regulation of IMF contents in pigs. Overall design: The mRNA profiles in longissimus muslce from pig with high (n=3) and low (n=3) intramuscular fat contents were generated by an Illumina HiSeq 2000 Sequencing System.