Pigs are globally farmed animals which provide protein for human consumption in the form of skeletal muscle. To better understand the function of long intergenic noncoding RNAs (lincRNAs) in porcine skeletal muscle growth and development, we collected RNA-seq data from porcine longissimus dorsi muscle (LDM) during embryonic development. We identified a total of 739 lincRNA transcripts, which were distributed on all chromosomes except the chromosome Y, and analyzed their molecular characteristics. Compared to protein-coding genes, lincRNAs showed shorter transcripts, longer exons, fewer exons and higher tissue specificity. In addition, the abundance of lincRNAs in five embryonic development stages were analyzed and 45 differentially expressed lincRNAs were screened, three of which were highly expressed in LDM during porcine embryonic development. Finally, we predicted the potential target genes and functions of the lincRNAs, and identified 1 537 cis-target genes and 8 571 trans-target genes. Furthermore, we identified two key candidate lincRNAs involved in muscle development, XLOC_024652 and XLOC_001832, for post-trial validation. Our results provide a genome-wide resource of lincRNAs which are potentially involved in porcine embryonic skeletal muscle development and lay a foundation for the further study of their functions.

猪是全球养殖的动物，以骨骼肌的形式提供蛋白质供人类食用。为了更好地了解长基因间非编码RNA（lincRNA）在猪骨骼肌生长和发育中的功能，我们收集了猪背最长肌RNA-seq数据胚胎发育过程中的肌肉（LDM）。我们鉴定了总共739个lincRNA转录物，这些转录物分布在除Y染色体以外的所有染色体上，并分析了它们的分子特征。与蛋白质编码基因相比，lincRNAs显示出较短的转录本，更长的外显子，更少的外显子和更高的组织特异性。此外，分析了五个胚胎发育阶段的lincRNA的丰度，并筛选了45个差异表达的lincRNA，其中三个在猪胚胎发育过程中在LDM中高表达。最后，我们预测了lincRNA的潜在靶基因和功能，并鉴定了1537个顺式靶基因和8571个反式靶基因。此外，我们确定了涉及肌肉发育的两个关键候选lincRNA，XLOC_024652和XLOC_001832，用于审后验证。我们的研究结果提供了lincRNA的全基因组资源，其可能参与了猪胚胎骨骼肌的发育，并为进一步研究其功能奠定了基础。