Chicken meat quality: muscle transcriptional profiles of chickens with high and low breast meat ultimate pH. Gallus gallus

The processing ability of chicken meat is highly related to its ultimate pH (pHu), which is mainly determined by the amount of glycogen in the muscle at death. The molecular mechanisms involved in variations of those traits for chicken remain to be fully described. For that purpose, two chicken lines were divergently selected on breast meat pHu, i.e. the pHu- and the pHu+ lines. In this study, Chicken Genome Arrays (60 K) were used to compare muscle gene expression profiles of chickens from both lines. The final goal of this experiment is to identify biomarkers of low and high-pHu chicken meat. This study was supported by INRA and the French Ministry of Agriculture through the RFI CASDAR #1309 OPTIVIANDE. Overall design: Breast muscle transcriptomics profiles of chickens issued from divergent selection (6th generation) caracterized by low (average pHu = 5.55; n = 15 chickens) and high breast meat ultimate pH (average pHu = 6.34; n = 16 chickens)