A gene expression estimator of intramuscular fat percentage for use in both cattle and sheep

• Published in: Journal of animal science and biotechnology Vol. 5; no. 4; pp. 379 - 390
• Main Authors: Guo, Bing, Kongsuwan, Kritaya, Greenwood, Paul L, Zhou, Guanghong, Zhang, Wangang, Dalrymple, Brian P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Springer-Verlag 16-06-2014; BioMed Central; Key Laboratory of Meat Processing and Quality Control, Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, College of Food Science and Technology, Nanjing Agriculture University, Nanjing 210095, P.R.China; Now at, National Institute of Animal Health, 50/2 Kasetklang, Ladyao,Bangkok 10900, Thailand%CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences,Armidale NSW 2350, Australia; NSW Department of primary Industries,Armidale NSW 2350, Australia%Key Laboratory of Meat Processing and Quality Control, Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, College of Food Science and Technology, Nanjing Agriculture University, Nanjing 210095, P.R.China%CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences, St.Lucia QLD 4067, Australia; CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences, St.Lucia QLD 4067, Australia%CSIRO Animal, Food and Health Sciences, St.Lucia QLD 4067, Australia
• Subjects: Animals; Brahman; Cattle; data collection; Datasets; DNA microarrays; Estimators; Ethics; Farms; Fatty acids; Gene expression; gene expression regulation; Genes; IMF; intramuscular fat; longissimus muscle; microarray technology; Muscles; proteins; Sheep; somatotropin; ultrasonics; Ultrasound; 基因表达; 牛羊; 稳健估计; 肌内脂肪; 肌肉蛋白; 脂肪酸合成; 超声波扫描; Australia; Western Australia Australia; New South Wales Australia; Sheep; Gene expression phenotype; IMF; Cattle
• ISSN: 1674-9782; 2049-1891; 2049-1891
• DOI: 10.1186/2049-1891-5-35

Background：The expression of genes encoding proteins involved in triacyglyceride and fatty acid synthesis and storage in cattle muscle are correlated with intramuscular fat（IMF）%.Are the same genes also correlated with IMF%in sheep muscle,and can the same set of genes be used to estimate IMF%in both species？Results：The correlation between gene expression（microarray） and IMF%in the longissimus muscle（LM） of twenty sheep was calculated.An integrated analysis of this dataset with an equivalent cattle correlation dataset and a cattle differential expression dataset was undertaken.A total of 30 genes were identified to be strongly correlated with IMF%in both cattle and sheep.The overlap of genes was highly significant,8 of the 13 genes in the TAG gene set and 8 of the 13 genes in the FA gene set were in the top 100 and 500 genes respertively most correlated with IMF%in sheep,P-value = 0.Of the 30 genes,CIDEA,THRSP,ACSM1,DGAT2 and FABP4 had the highest average rank in both species.Using the data from two small groups of Brahman cattle（control and Hormone growth promotant-treated[known to decrease IMF%in muscle]） and 22 animals in total,the utility of a direct measure and different estimators of IMF%（ultrasound and gene expression） to differentiate between the two groups were examined.Directly measured IMF%and IMF%estimated from ultrasound scanning could not discriminate between the two groups.However,using gene expression to estimate IMF%discriminated between the two groups.Increasing the number of genes used to estimate IMF%from one to five significantly increased the discrimination power;but increasing the number of genes to 15 resulted in little further improvement.Conclusion：We have demonstrated the utility of a comparative approach to identify robust estimators of IMF%in the LM in cattle and sheep.We have also demonstrated a number of approaches（potentially applicable to much smaller groups of animals than conventional methods） to using gene expression to rank animals for IMF%within a single farm/treatment,or to estimate differences in IMF%between two farms/treatments.