The study was conducted with Limousin bull calves from a large study on the genetic determinism of beef and meat quality traits. The bull calves were not closely related to one another (for at least 4 generations) were fattened in a single feedlot and fed ad libidum with wet corn silage. They were humanely slaughtered in an accredited commercial slaughterhouse when they reached 16 months. Longissimus thoracis muscle samples were dissected immediately after death and tissue samples were snap frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80°C until analysis.  After transfer to ice-cold RNeasy RLT lysis buffer (Qiagen), LT tissue samples were homogenised using a Precellys tissue homogeniser (Bertin Technologie). Total RNA was isolated using RNeasy Midi columns (Qiagen) and then treated with RNAse-free DNase I (Qiagen) for 15 min at room temperature according to the manufacturer's protocols. The concentration of total RNA was measured with a Nanodrop ND-100 instrument (Thermo Scientific) and the quality was assessed with an RNA 6000 Nano Labchip kit using an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer (Agilent Technologies). All samples had an RNA Integrity Number (RIN) value greater than eight. 4 ug of total RNA were used with Illumina TruSeq RNA sample preparation kit to make the paired-end RNA-Seq libraries; size selection of 200+/-25 bp fragments
Experimental Factor: individual
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