ABSTRACT: Background: Intramuscular fat (IMF) content is highly valued as it improves meat product quality by enhancing taste, juiciness, and tenderness. IMF content can be significantly different between breeds. Thought many lipid metabolism-related genes are stated to be associated with IMF deposition, the molecular mechanism of IMF deposition is still poorly understood. To date, no gene or mutation loci responsible for the difference of IMF content among cattle breeds has been identified. To identify transcripts with potential regulatory role in lipid accumulated in muscle tissue, RNA sequencing was performed to compare the mRNAs, lncRNAs, and circRNAs expression patterns in the longissimus dorsi muscle and back fat between Chinese buffalo and cattle. Results: A total of 12 cDNA libraries were constructed. A total of 925,441,106 and 512,507,068 raw reads were obtained from buffalo and cattle, respectively. After filtering the adaptor and low quality reads, 909,040,352 and 491,967,820 clean reads were retained. In total, 19,917 mRNAs, 43,975 lncRNAs, and 10,701 circRNAs were identified in buffalo and 19,383 mRNAs, 8,265 lncRNAs, and 18,535 circRNAs were identified in cattle.
