The potential mechanism of microRNA involvement in the regulation of muscle development in weaned piglets by tryptophan and its metabolites

Tryptophan is the second or third limiting amino acid in pigs and has an irreplaceable role in piglet growth and muscle development. In this study, we emphasized the potential role of miRNAs in the regulation of muscle development by tryptophan and its metabolites in the longest dorsal muscle of weaned piglets through transcriptome analysis. We constructed a network of all differentially expressed miRNAs in the longest dorsal muscle of piglets in relation to their target genes, and analyzed the functions of miRNAs corresponding to target genes by various means, including KEGG, ClueGO and GSEA.

To further elucidate the regulatory roles of differentially expressed miRNAs in transcription and translation, we also constructed the target relationship and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network of differentially expressed miRNAs, which had core gene clusters functionally related to cell proliferation, signaling pathways, hormone release and muscle development. Finally, qRT-PCR verified the reliability and accuracy of the RNA-seq results and found a correlation coefficient of 0.97 between the two methods.