title: Breed, sex and anatomical location-specific gene expression profiling of the porcine skeletal muscles.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Skeletal muscle is one of the most important economic traits in agricultural animals, especially in pigs. In the modern pig industry, lean type pigs have undergone strong artificial selection for muscle growth, which has led to remarkable phenotypic variations compared with fatty type pigs, making these different breeds an ideal model for comparative studies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here, we present comprehensive gene expression profiling for the white (longissimus dorsi muscle) and the red (psoas major muscle) skeletal muscles among male and female fatty Rongchang, feral Tibetan and lean Landrace pigs, using a microarray approach. We identified differentially expressed genes that may be associated the phenotypic differences of porcine muscles among the breeds, between the sexes and the anatomical locations. We also used a clustering method to identify sets of functionally coexpressed genes that are linked to different muscle phenotypes. We showed that, compared with the white muscles, which primarily modulate metabolic processes, the red muscles show a tendency to be a risk factor for inflammation and immune-related disorders.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This analysis presents breed-, sex- and anatomical location-specific gene expression profiles and further identified genes that may be associated with the phenotypic differences in porcine muscles among breeds, between the sexes and the anatomical locations.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Animal Genetics & Breeding, College of Animal Science & Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, Sichuan 625000, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Chaowei
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Jideng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Anan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Surong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shuai
authors.forename: Jinyong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Mingzhou
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Xuewei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D008297:Male; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000378:metabolism*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013552:Swine / Q000235:genetics*