The breast muscle is essential for flight and determines the meat yield and quality of the meat type in pigeons. At present, studies about long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) expression profiles in skeletal muscles across the postnatal development of pigeons have not been reported. Here, we used transcriptome sequencing to examine the White-King pigeon breast muscle at four different ages (1 day, 14 days, 28 days, and 2 years old). We identified 12,918 mRNAs and 9158 lncRNAs (5492 known lncRNAs and 3666 novel lncRNAs) in the breast muscle, and 7352 mRNAs and 4494 lncRNAs were differentially expressed in the process of development. We found that highly expressed mRNAs were mainly related to cell-basic and muscle-specific functions. Differential expression and time-series analysis showed that differentially expressed genes were primarily associated with muscle development and functions, blood vessel development, cell cycle, and energy metabolism. To further predict the possible role of lncRNAs, we also conducted the WGCNA and trans/cis analyses. We found that differentially expressed lncRNAs such as lncRNA-LOC102093252, lncRNA-G12653, lncRNA-LOC110357465, lncRNA-G14790, and lncRNA-LOC110360188 might respectively target UBE2B, Pax7, AGTR2, HDAC1, Sox8 and participate in the development of the muscle. Our study provides a valuable resource for studying the lncRNAs and mRNAs of pigeon muscles and for improving the understanding of molecular mechanisms in muscle development.
Keywords: breast muscle; development; lncRNAs; mRNAs; pigeon.