comparable with known ensembl lincrnas. In addition, putative lincrnas are functionally associated with essen-tial biological processes, including rna splicing, protein localization and fatty acid metabolic process, implying that they may play an important role in regulating liver devel-opment. The validation of selected lincrnas that are spe-cifically expressed in developing liver tissues further sug-gested the effectiveness of our approach. Our study shows that lincrnas that are differentially expressed during three liver developmental stages could have important regulatory roles in liver development. The identified putative lincr-nas are a valuable resource for further functional studies.