A primary goal of meat production is to efficiently produce safe, high-quality products. Competing interests within the goal complicate this seemingly simple aspiration. Consequently, it is necessary to emphasize efforts to enhance our comprehension of biological and molecular factors that influence quality, safety, and efficient meat production. This experiment aimed to define the proteomic profiles of the myofibrillar fraction of fresh pork with differing quality traits. Myofibrils from aged pork chops with a range of tenderness levels were used to achieve this objective. Fifty-four proteins were differentially abundant between the divergent tenderness groups. This was due to the expression profile of proteins in muscle and/or changes in proteins in the myofibrillar fraction during postmortem aging. These results inform and direct the development of antemortem and postmortem applications to ensure success in producing high-quality pork.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.