Research progress of epigenetic mechanism of noncoding RNAs regulating avian skeletal muscle development

Meat, eggs and milk are three important products in animal husbandry, among which, the demand for meat is the highest. Muscle is an essential component of animal body, and skeletal muscle accounts for about 40% of body weight. Skeletal muscle plays an important role in animal metabolism, body movement, energy storage and health, and it's the essential part in body function normal running. The development process of skeletal muscle is extremely complex, mainly including somite proliferation and differentiation, myoblast proliferation and differentiation, myotube fusion, and the formation of muscle fiber, and the whole progress is regulated by many genetic factors. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), which mainly consist of micro RNAs (miRNAs), long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), and circular RNAs (circRNAs), can regulate skeletal muscle development by targeting key factors. This paper briefly described the characteristics and functions of those ncRNAs, then reviewed recent studies of ncRNAs in avian muscle growth and development, and elucidated the epigenetic regulatory mechanism of ncRNAs in skeletal muscle growth and development, which could provide references for improving avian growth and development.