We compared the intramuscular fat deposition in ribeye and subcutaneous fat muscle of Aberdeen Angus beef cattle. Eight samples of the best and worst muscle marbling grade of Angus cattle were collected from 120 Angus cattle after slaughtering. High-quality RNA was subsequently extracted from the beef ribeye and subcutaneous fat muscle and the transcriptome was sequenced using RNAseq technology. Approximately 37.22 GByte of clean sequencing reads were obtained in this study. A total of 15 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and 16 DEGs were detected in the ribeye and subcutaneous fat muscle tissues respectively. In the beef ribeye, six genes were up-regulated (CYP1A1, RRAD, RETRG1, LOC787269, XIRP1, OTUD1) and nine genes down-regulated (Bos_taurus_newGene_1359, Bos_taurus_newGene_4387, KRT18, MYL9, ACTA2, PTGDS, DSTN, CD5L, MYL6B), whereas the subcutaneous fat muscle, characterized by good marble meat quality, had 14 genes up-regulated (CYP1A1,