Porcine skeletal muscle genes play a major role in determining muscle growth and meat quality. Construction of a full-length
cDNA library is an effective way to understand the expression of functional genes in muscle tissues. In addition, novel genes
for further research could be identified in the library. In this study, we constructed a full-length cDNA library from porcine
muscle tissue. The estimated average size of the cDNA inserts was 1 076 bp, and the cDNA fullness ratio was 86.2%. A total
of 1 058 unique sequences with 342 contigs (32.3%) and 716 singleton (67.7%) expressed sequence tags (EST) were obtained
by clustering and assembling. Meanwhile, 826 (78.1%) ESTs were categorized as known genes, and 232 (21.9%) ESTs were
categorized as unknown genes. 65 novel porcine genes that exhibit no identity in the TIGR gene index of Sus scrofa and
124 full-length sequences with unknown functions were deposited in the dbEST division of GenBank (accession numbers:
EU650784-EU650788, GE843306, GH228978-GH229100). The abundantly expressed genes in porcine muscle tissue were
related to muscle fiber development, energy metabolism and protein synthesis. Gene ontology analysis showed that sequences
expressed in porcine muscle tissue contained a high percentage of binding activity, catalytic activity, structural molecule
activity and motor activity, which involved mainly in metabolic, cellular and developmental process, distributed mainly in
intracellular region. The sequence data generated in this study would provide valuable information for identifying porcine
genes expressed in muscle tissue and help to advance the study on the structure and function of genes in pigs.