Array technology has been increasingly used to monitor global gene expression patterns in various tissues and cell types. However. applications to muscle development and pathology as well as meat production in livestock species have been hampered by the lack of appropriate cDNA collections. To overcome this problem, a directed cDNA library was constructed starting from 23 muscles of meat-producing bovines to derive a collection of 3573 clones. A preliminary sequence characterization of this collection indicated that the most abundant transcripts correspond to genes encoding proteins involved in energy metabolism (COX and NADH dehydrogenase subunits) and belonging to the contractile apparatus (myosin chains and troponin isoforms). From this cDNA library, we selected a set of 435 clones representing 340 unique genes, of which 24 were novel. This collection was subsequently completed with 75 specific cDNA probes for genes of interest already studied in our laboratory. The bovine 'muscle' cDNA repertoire thus designed was spotted onto a nylon membrane (macroarray) in order to test its utility to further investigate the transcriptome of bovine muscles in relation to meat quality traits. It is also anticipated that this type of collection might be useful for the study of chronic myologic diseases in other mammalian species, including humans.