Abstract
BackgroundRecent QTL and gene expression studies have highlighted ankyrins as positional and functional candidate genes for meat quality. Our objective was to characterise the promoter region of the bovine ankyrin 1 gene and to test polymorphisms for association with sensory and technological meat quality measures.ResultsSeven novel promoter SNPs were identified in a 1.11 kb region of the ankyrin 1 promoter in Angus, Charolais and Limousin bulls (n = 15 per breed) as well as 141 crossbred beef animals for which meat quality data was available. Eighteen haplotypes were inferred with significant breed variation in haplotype frequencies. The five most frequent SNPs and the four most frequent haplotypes were subsequently tested for association with sensory and technological measures of meat quality in the crossbred population. SNP1, SNP3 and SNP4 (which were subsequently designated regulatory SNPs) and SNP5 were associated with traits that contribute to sensorial and technological measurements of tenderness and texture; Haplotype 1 and haplotype 4 were oppositely correlated with traits contributing to tenderness (P < 0.05). While no single SNP was associated with intramuscular fat (IMF), a clear association with increased IMF and juiciness was observed for haplotype 2.ConclusionThe conclusion from this study is that alleles defining haplotypes 2 and 4 could usefully contribute to marker SNP panels used to select individuals with improved IMF/juiciness or tenderness in a genome-assisted selection framework.
Highlights
Recent QTL and gene expression studies have highlighted ankyrins as positional and functional candidate genes for meat quality
Characterisation of a novel muscle transcript of the bovine ankyrin 1 gene After 5’ RACE-PCR, two ANK1 transcripts differing in size by approximately 350 bp were observed (Figure 1)
In this study we have found that polymorphisms (SNPs and haplotypes) of the ankyrin 1 gene are in association with these important meat quality traits
Summary
Recent QTL and gene expression studies have highlighted ankyrins as positional and functional candidate genes for meat quality. Ankyrins are structural proteins forming a fundamental component of the cytoskeleton. Ankyrins are a known target of the calpains [7,8,9] which are a family of endogenous cysteine proteases that have been shown to be fundamental to the post-mortem proteolysis of myofibrillar proteins and cytoskeletal proteins and consequent meat tenderisation [10,11,12,13,14]. The bovine ankyrin 1 gene has been mapped close to a QTL for fat associated traits, including marbling in meat [17,18,19] on bovine chromosome 27. Expression of the porcine ankyrin 1 gene has been associated with a number of meat quality traits, including tenderness, intramuscular fat level (IMF) and water-binding capacity [20]
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