Transcriptome analysis of porcine skeletal muscle: Differentially expressed genes in Italian Large White pigs with divergent values for glycolytic potential

Abstract

Glycolytic Potential (GP) is an important parameter influencing pig meat quality. In order to identify genes and gene networks influencing glycolytic potential we utilized microarray analysis and studied the expression profile of skeletal muscle tissue from Italian Large White pigs with extreme high/low levels of GP. The knowledge of differentially expressed genes in groups of pigs with substantively different GP values could be a first step to understand the metabolic regulatory pathways influencing GP. The genes more expressed in the samples with low GP are mainly associated with energy metabolism while those more expressed in the samples with high GP are involved in intracellular transport. These results can give useful information to identify candidate genes for glycolytic potential level of pig meat.