Deciphering the significant role of various gene expression in modulating the toughness of bovine muscle

The toughness of the meat is important factor and used to determine the quality of the meat. Increase in toughness is leads to change the muscle structure, nature of connective tissue and collagen content in the meat. The present study was designed to identify the role of collagen and its associated genes in differential toughness of the bovine muscles. The fibroblasts were isolated from two different muscles such as biceps femoris (BF) and longissimus dorsi (LD), which has various toughness in nature. Initially the growth curve analysis showed the different proliferation rate in BF and LD fibroblasts measured using CCK8 assay. Further, the genes responsible for collagen synthesis were highly expressed in BF than the LD fibroblasts. Also, the collagen degrading genes are decreased in expression in fibroblast derived from BF than LD. Together, the fibroblasts derived from BF muscles has the high toughness than fibroblasts from LD muscles was confirmed by collagen content and expression analysis of associated genes.