Skeletal muscle transcriptional profiles in two Italian beef breeds, Chianina and Maremmana, reveal breed specific variation

Chianina and Maremmana breeds play an important role in the Italian cattle meat market. The Chianina breed is an ancient breed principally raised for draught. Now this breed is the worldwide recognized producer of top quality beef, tasteful and tender, specifically the famous “Florentine steak”. The Maremmana characterized by a massive skeletal structure, is a rustic cattle breed selected for adaptability to the marshy land of the Maremma region. We used a high throughput mRNA sequencing to analyze gene expression in muscle tissues of two Italian cattle breeds, Maremmana (MM) and Chianina (CN) with different selection history. We aim to examine the specific genetic contribution of each breed to meat production and quality, comparing the skeletal muscle tissue from Maremmana and Chianina. Most of the differentially expressed genes were grouped in the Glycolysis/Gluconeogenesis pathways. The rate and the extent of post-mortem energy metabolism have a critical effect on the conversion of muscle to meat. Furthermore, we aim at discovering the differences in nucleotide variation between the two breeds which might be attributable to the different history of selection/divergence. In this work we could emphasize the involvement of pathways of post-mortem energy metabolism. Moreover, we detected a collection of coding SNPs which could offer new genomic resources to improve phenotypic selection in livestock breeding program.