Association of genes involved in carcass and meat quality traits in 15 European bovine breeds

Variations in meat quality traits are under complex genetic control and improvement has been hampered by the difficulty in their measurement. Several QTL have been reported for different meat quality related traits, but few genes have been described which explain large amounts of the phenotypic variation. The use of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker panels with predictive value for carcass traits have been evaluated for cattle and SNP are commercially available even though their predictive accuracy may be low in different breeds. To identify new molecular markers for meat quality, an association study was performed in 15 breeds of cattle using 389 SNP belonging to 206 candidate genes known to be involved in muscle development, metabolism and structure. Fifty-four SNP belonging to 20 different genes were found associated with different growth, carcass and meat quality traits. Some of them were novel associations and other were replications of known associations. Among the former, the gene-network associated with the calpain/calpastatin system was shown to be associated with meat texture, although small effects are found for the examined polymorphisms. Novel associations also included SNP in AANAT which was associated with collagen (P=0.006), CAST with fatty acid muscle composition (P=0.00003), CYP1A1 with juiciness (P=0.0005), DGAT2 with physical traits (P=0.0009) and lipid content (P=0.01) in muscle, MADH3 with the myofibrilar fragmentation index (MFI) (P=0.01), NEB with weight (P=0.00009), PCSK1 with juiciness (P=0.002), PLOD3 with carcass performance (P=0.0009) and fatty acids (P=0.04), and PGAM2 and VIM with post-mortem maturation (P=0.00008 and 0.000005, respectively). These data provide a starting point to investigate the complex gene-networks underlying economically important traits which are of importance to the beef industry for the improvement of production efficiency and meat quality. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.