Muscle development and lipid metabolism plays important roles during fetal development stages. Texel sheep, originally from Belgium, has remarkable muscle development and leanness that naturally caused by a mutation in the myostatin gene, Ujumqin sheep from China has a large fat tail. In this study, in order to investigate and have a better perception of differentially expressed genes and their pathways in the sheep muscle tissue in the pre-natal, the raw data of gene expression the muscle tissue of these two sheep breeds derived from the microarray method were used -GSE23563 access number-. Five differentially expressed genes -Adj p-value <0.05- were identified using the LIMMA package in R. Among them, the EEF1A2 gene was confirmed as a potential candidate gene involved in the muscle development and lipid metabolism during fetal development. GO and KEGG pathway analysis for differentially expressed genes by DAVID showed that a number of identified differentially expressed genes in muscle tissue were involved in processes such as cell proliferation, cell adhesion and important pathways such as the Rap1 signaling pathway. The results of this study may provide basic information for a better understanding of the relationship between effective genes in the formation of muscle and fat tissue during fetal development and also the pathways involved in these traits. These genes might provide some evidence on DNA markers associated with birth weight in sheep which can be applied in selection programs.

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