Transcriptome analysis of genetic mechanism of growth curve inflection point using a pig model

Animal growth curves play an important role for animal breeders to optimize feeding and management strategies (De Lange et al., 2001 [1]; Brossard et al., 2009 [2]; Strathe et al., 2010 [3]). However, the genetic mechanism of the phenotypic difference between the inflection point and noninflection points of the growth curve remains unclear. Here, we report the differentially expressed gene pattern in pig longissimus dorsi among three typical time points of the growth curve, inflection point (IP), before inflection point (BIP) and after inflection point (AIP). The whole genome RNA-seq data was deposited at GenBank under the accession number PRJNA2284587. The RNA-seq libraries generated 117 million reads of 5.89 gigabases in length. Totals of 21,331, 20,996 and 20,139 expressed transcripts were identified in IP, UIP and AIP, respectively. Furthermore, we identified 757 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between IP and UIP, and 271 DEGs between AIP and IP. Function enrichment analysis of DEGs found that the highly expressed genes in IP were mainly enriched in energy metabolism, global transcriptional activity and bone development intensity. This study contributes to reveal the genetic mechanism of growth curve inflection point.