Analysis of mRNA expression of CNN3, DCN, FBN2, POSTN, SPARC and YWHAQ genes in porcine foetal and adult skeletal muscles

Skeletal muscle growth is determined by the number of prenatally formed fibres and by the degree of their postnatal hypertrophy; i.e. prenatal development may influence the postnatal growth. Sup - pression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to identify genes more expressed in fetal hind limb mus - cles of Pietrain pigs (44 days of gestation) compared to the adult biceps femoris. Six potential functional candidate genes ( CNN3, DCN, FBN2, POSTN, SPARC and YWHAQ) were selected to verify the SSH results using real-time RT-PCR. Expression levels of the studied genes were significantly higher ( P < 0.05) in the fetal muscle compared to the adult muscle. FBN2 and POSTN exhibited the highest mRNA levels (mean relative ratios were 182.7 and 121.6, respectively). The studied genes may play an important role in muscle biology and may be candidates for muscling traits.