Build up a synthetic reference map of bovine muscle proteins

Variability of meat quality is a major concern for industry and consumers. Many factors can affect final meat quality, such as animal welfare, breeding, feeding and transport conditions, slaughtering conditions, electrical stimulation, and chilling conditions. Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) applied to meat science is a powerful tool for biomarker discovery and to understand factors related to both inter- or intraspecific meat quality. Aim of this work is to evaluate protein expression profiles in different bovine species towards the building up of an informative synthetic map of bovine muscle proteins. A synthetic gel consists of a representative set of spots generated from several registered gel images. This is a useful tool to obtain a representative profile of the proteome of bovine muscle in meat sciences. Besides, analysis of expression profiles could be a key to find protein markers for meat quality, and give deep understanding of characteristics of more suitable genotypes for meat and milk production.