Relationship between myosin heavy chain isoform expression and muscling in several diverse pig breeds.

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship of the relative abundance of transcripts of myosin heavy chain (MyHC) isoforms and muscling in several diverse pig breeds. The animals used were from 3 pure breeds (Pietrain, Duroc, and Mongcai) and 2 crosses [Duroc x Pietrain (DUPI) and Duroc x Berlin Miniature pigs (DUMI)]. Real-time PCR quantification of MyHC isoforms I, IIa, IIx, and IIb showed that the relative expression of MyHC IIb was greater in pigs with large LM areas in both DUPI (69.6 vs. 53.0%) and DUMI (60.5 vs. 47.5%). In DUPI, similar transcript levels of MyHC I were found in both large and small LM (14.7 and 15.2%), whereas in DUMI animals, these values were 18.4 and 33.5% (P < 0.05). The groups of animals with large and small LM area in the DUPI also tended to differ in MyHC IIa and IIx transcripts. The comparison among different breeds confirmed the trend of high MyHC IIb transcript abundance together with high muscularity. In Pietrain, Duroc, DUPI, and DUMI, MyHC IIb accounted for more than half of the MyHC transcripts (65.4, 59.7, 54.0, and 54.0%). Mongcai showed low MyHC IIb (11.4%) but high type I, IIa, and IIx relative RNA levels (24.1, 28.5, and 35.9%). Frequencies of fibers, determined by muscle fiber staining with ATPase, and relative abundance of MyHC isoforms, determined by quantitative reverse transcription-PCR, of corresponding pairs of type I, IIa, and IIx/ IIb were correlated (r = 0.71, 0.67, and 0.52, respectively). The study demonstrates that MyHC IIb fibers are the most prominent in pigs having large LM area and implies that MyHC IIb is the determining fiber contributing to the differentiation of large and small loin eye muscle area in the pig.

Structural and functional genomics to elucidate the genetic background of microstructural and biophysical muscle properties in the pig.

Linkage analyses enable identifying genomic regions that exhibit quantitative trait loci (QTL) without prior hypothesis on the physiology of a trait. Function-oriented expression analyses are a complementary approach to derive hypothesis on the genetic background of phenotypic variation. Muscle fibre types and size affect body composition and meat quality traits. The number and proportion of muscle fibres are to a large extent determined during the prenatal development. Consequently, QTL for muscle fibre, meat quality and carcass traits were detected in a porcine experimental population based on Duroc and Berlin Miniature Pig. Regions with either significant QTL for muscle fibre traits or significant QTL for meat quality and muscularity or both were detected on SSC1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 13, 14, 15 and 16. Here, effects on the complex traits of muscularity and meat quality might be the result of genetic variation primarily affecting fibre type distribution traits. To complement the QTL study expression profiling of prenatal muscle tissue of Duroc and Pietrain was conducted that revealed a list of functional candidate genes for meat quality and carcass traits of various physiological networks. Assignments of these genes to QTL regions highlight them as positional functional candidates. Exemplarily, five genes were analysed further and shown to be associated with meat quality and carcass traits. Further, the relative MYH isotype transcript abundance was found to be associated with muscularity. Relative MYH isotype transcript abundance is proposed as a new phenotype to unravel the genetic background of variation in traits related to muscle and meat properties.