Use of molecular marker to evaluate marbling in Senepol cattle

Abstract

Marbling, one of the main characteristics related to beef quality, has led to the development of numerous techniques for its measurement, such as the use of carcass ultrasound, identifying breeds and/or strains that present greater marbling without the need to slaughter the animals and the use of molecular markers, which confer the genes alleles that may have a negative or positive effect for a given trait. Currently, Thyroglobulin (TG) has been studied as a gene related to marbling in bovine species, therefore, the objective of this work was to verify the expression of polymorphisms of TG gene in 62 Senepol steers, using the PCR-RFLP technique. For that, samples of broom hairs from the tail of the animals were collected for the extraction of genomic DNA. The pair of primers used in the PCR reactions were designed according to GenBank and the restriction enzyme chosen was the XmnI endonuclease. To visualize the results, electrophoresis in a 2% agarose gel was performed. Of the 62 animals evaluated, 49 were positive for Thyroglobulin gene expression, suggesting the veracity of the association of this gene with marbling, which may allow the selection of Senepol animals with greater aptitude for marbling.