237 - Using Metabolomic Approaches to Understand and Reduce Animal Variation in Meat Quality Traits

Abstract: Failure to meet consumer expectations for meat quality attributes such as color, tenderness, and flavor leads to loss of customer satisfaction and market share. Thus, much effort has been dedicated to understanding the biological variation in these traits. However, traditional approaches explained only a limited amount of biological variation. Investigations of the genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome of meat animals has greatly increased the understanding of biochemical processes affecting meat quality attributes. Gene expression in response to environmental factors results in protein production. These proteins, which vary in functionality, are involved in cellular processes which produce metabolites. Thus, the proteome comprises the machinery of cellular functions and provides a great deal of information about genomic expression resulting in the phenotype. However, quantifying the metabolome provides additional information about the functionality of the machinery, and thus, even greater information about the phenotype. Untargeted metabolomic investigations have suggested novel mechanisms influencing meat tenderness, lean color stability, and flavor. Future work with targeted metabolomic approaches should focus on validating these mechanisms and studying these mechanisms under variable production systems. Moreover, future work should integrate metabolomic data with genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic data to fully understand the biological basis of meat quality phenotypes.