Czech J. Food Sci., 2022, 40(1):15-25 | DOI: 10.17221/255/2020-CJFS

Meat quality - Genetic background and methods of its analysisReview

Marek Kowalczyk, Agnieszka Kaliniak-Dziura^*, Michał Prasow, Piotr Domaradzki, Anna Litwińczuk

Institute of Quality Assessment and Processing of Animal Products, Faculty of Animal Sciences and Bioeconomy, University of Life Sciences, Lublin, Poland

Corrigendum in: CJFS. 2023 Feb 27; 41(1):78. doi:10.17221/26/2023-CJFS

Growing consumer awareness is forcing food producers to supply raw material and products of increasingly high quality and health-promoting properties. Knowledge of the genetic background of quality characteristics is taking on great importance, enabling selection based on molecular markers. The increasing throughput of molecular techniques, in combination with an expanding bioinformatics infrastructure, is leading to continual improvement in understanding of the molecular mechanisms influencing meat quality. This has resulted in the identification of polymorphic nucleotides [single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)] showing a relationship with meat characteristics such as tenderness [polymorphism in the calpain (CAPN) and calpastatin (CAST) genes], marbling [diacylglycerol o-acyltransferase 1 (DGAT1)], colour, pH and water-holding capacity (WHC) [CAST, stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) and others], and fatty acid profile (SCD1). An increasingly wide range of methods is used for analysis, from techniques based on amplification of nucleic acids [polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) and amplification refractory mutation system-PCR (ARMS-PCR)] through Sanger sequencing to high-throughput next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques. This paper is a review of the literature on polymorphism of genes determining the quality characteristics of meat and molecular methods used to detect them.

Keywords: meat tenderness; fatty acid profile; molecular markers; SNP; molecular techniques

Published: February 24, 2022  Show citation