Bílek K. author Knoll A. author Stratil A. author Svobodová K. author Horák P. author Bechyňová R. author Van Poucke M. author Peelman L.J. author text journal article 2008 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. Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) was used to identify genes more expressed in fetal hind limb muscles of Piétrain 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. mRNA; fetus; gene expression; real time RT-PCR; skeletal muscle 10.17221/313-CJAS https://cjas.agriculturejournals.cz/artkey/cjs-200805-0001.php https://cjas.agriculturejournals.cz/artkey/cjs-200805-0001.php continuing 53 5 181 186 2008 12121819 periodical academic journal