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    Home > Food News > Food Articles > Find the "codebook" to make pork more delicious

    Find the "codebook" to make pork more delicious

    • Last Update: 2021-08-01
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Find the "codebook" to make pork more delicious
    Find the "codebook" to make pork more delicious Find the "codebook" to make pork more delicious

    Hand drawing of Rongchang pig.
    Photo courtesy of Jinlong

    Hand drawing of Rongchang pig.
    Photo courtesy of Jinlong

    The meat of pigs is fat or lean, and the taste is also different, such as front leg meat, pork belly, tenderloin, seat rump, etc.
    People are looking for delicious food, while scientific researchers are targeting some molecules of pig economic traits.
    The mining of the mechanism realizes the autonomous regulation of meat quality
    .


    Stir-fried twice-cooked pork now uses pork belly, and perhaps the same taste can be achieved with back pork in the future


    Recently, the pig genetics and breeding team of the College of Animal Science and Technology of Sichuan Agricultural University published online research papers in Nature-Communications, constructing gene expression profiles of intact skeletal muscles of 47 different parts of pigs, and using spatial transcriptome technology, from single The level of muscle fiber revealed the molecular mechanism of gene expression regulation of pork quality traits
    .

    This research provides important basic data and theoretical support for the next step of molecular breeding, and also lays a foundation for promoting pigs as a biological model of human biology and disease
    .

    Local pig breeds are natural gene pools

    Local pig breeds are natural gene pools

    China is the world's largest pig-raising country.
    The country's live pig inventory, slaughter and pork output rank first in the world, accounting for more than half of China's total meat output
    .


    Coupled with a vast area, under the influence of extremely complex ecological and socio-economic conditions, domestic pig breeds with different genetic characteristics and production performance have gradually formed


    Take Sichuan as an example.
    Sichuan is a major pig-raising province in the country, with 56.
    144 million pigs produced for slaughter in 2020, ranking first in the country
    .


    Moreover, Sichuan has a long history of pig raising and rich local pig resources, including Chenghua pigs, Neijiang pigs, Yanan pigs, Wujin pigs (Liangshan pigs), Penzhou mountain pigs (Qingyu pigs and Yabian pigs) and Tibetan pigs.


    Compared with some specialized domestic pig breeds or strains bred abroad, these breeds have the characteristics of strong environmental adaptability, tolerance to extensive management, strong disease resistance, high fecundity, good meat quality, unique flavor, and better taste
    .


    In the eyes of scientific researchers, these distinctive local varieties are a natural gene bank, and are good original materials for the utilization of heterosis and the further cultivation of "high-yield, high-yield" varieties


    "However, compared with foreign pigs, China's local pig breeds have a slower growth rate and a low lean meat rate
    .


    " Jin Long, the first author of the paper and associate professor of the College of Animal Science and Technology of Sichuan Agricultural University, said in an interview with the "China Science News"


    How to make full use of our country’s abundant local pig breed resources to cultivate new breeds (lines) that take into account both growth performance and lean meat percentage, especially to maintain a proper intramuscular fat content under the premise of low back fat, to ensure good meat quality.
    Current hotspots and difficulties in the field of agricultural animal breeding
    .

    To this end, the research team has continued to exert its efforts on the basis of mining the molecular mechanism of pig economic traits for more than ten years, using cutting-edge technology to start a series of difficult research work, and provide a more solid foundation for the protection and utilization of local pig breed resources.
    The theoretical basis
    .

    Mapping fine gene transcription regulation

    Mapping fine gene transcription regulation

    In recent years, the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology and the decline in sequencing costs have opened a chapter in the era of big data in the field of life sciences
    .


    In 2015, the Animal Genome Functional Annotation Project (FAANG) was officially launched.


    "At present, at the sequence level, pigs already have the same high-quality genomes as humans
    .


    Unfortunately, the annotations for various functional regulatory elements of the pig reference genome are not yet complete


    To a certain extent, this restricts the further exploration of the formation mechanism of important economic traits of pigs (especially meat quality traits)
    .

    In this study, based on the existing pig reference genome, a large number of regulatory transcripts were supplemented and annotated, including 19,072 lncRNA (long non-coding RNA), 2,440 TUCPs (unknown coding potential transcripts), and 48,232 circRNAs (loops).
    Shape RNA) and 1245 miRNA (small RNA)
    .


    At the same time, the high-throughput chromatin spatial conformation capture technology (Hi-C) was used to reconstruct the three-dimensional genome spatial structure of pig adipose tissue.


    "This is equivalent to knowing a place.
    Comparing 3D pictures with flat photos, the former is definitely clearer and more meaningful
    .
    " Jinlong said
    .

    Tang Qianzi pointed out that this research is an important work following the FAANG project.
    It is of great significance to improve the annotation information in a large number of pig genomes
    .

    "Among the many indicators that affect the quality of pork, muscle fiber type composition and intramuscular fat content are the most important, and there is a close relationship between the two
    .
    " In Jinlong's view, they use China's local pig breed "Rongchang pig" as the material.
    This research carried out just revealed the secret of the deliciousness of pork
    .

    The research is particularly focused on the growth of skeletal muscle, an important economic trait of pigs
    .
    Skeletal muscle is the most important part of the animal body, accounting for about 40% of the body weight of meat-producing animals
    .
    As the main component unit of skeletal muscle, muscle fibers are divided into four types: slow oxidation type (type I), fast oxidation type (type IIa), rapid glycolysis type (type IIb), and intermediate type (type IIx).
    The difference in their types It is one of the important factors affecting the muscle quality of meat-producing animals
    .

    A large number of studies in the past generally regarded multiple skeletal muscles as the same type of tissue, and there was no detailed and in-depth exploration on the genetic and transcriptional regulation characteristics of skeletal muscles in different parts
    .
    This study further constructed a detailed gene transcription regulation map of 47 different anatomical parts of skeletal muscle from the head, forelimbs, trunk to hind limbs, and clarified its molecules in energy metabolism, muscle fiber composition and lipid deposition.
    Adjusting the difference will provide important guidance for the meat traits of agricultural animals
    .

    47 kinds of pig skeletal muscle schematic       dragon for FIG.

    47 kinds of pig skeletal muscle schematic       dragon for FIG.

    Ideal model animal

    Ideal model animal

    In addition to being food, pigs have more important uses
    .
    As the closest model animal to humans, pigs are playing an increasingly important role in the field of human disease research, especially in human disease models, pharmacodynamics, xenogeneic cell and organ transplantation and so on
    .

    "For example, to study the mechanism of human obesity and develop drugs for treatment, pigs are usually used as obesity models, because some of the metabolic and physiological characteristics of pigs are very similar to those of humans
    .
    " Jin Long gave an example
    .

    "The most commonly used biomedical model before was mice, because the generation interval of mice is relatively short, and the evolutionary distance is slightly closer to humans, but some genes cannot be modeled on mice, only pigs can model them
    .
    Not only that.
    Pigs are also very good potential organ donors.
    As far as the heart is concerned, the pig's heart is very close to the human heart in size and weight
    .
    " Tang Qianzi introduced
    .

    In order to fully clarify the representativeness of pig as an important agricultural animal and metabolic-related disease model animal, with the assistance of Professor Li Guisen from Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, the study also compared the differences in gene transcription regulation patterns between pigs and humans and other model animals.
    Promoter-enhancer interaction, a typical spatial conformation of chromatin, reveals the regulation mechanism of differential transcription among species, and clarifies the regulation mode of a large number of pig-specific genes
    .

    "As research in this area continues to deepen, maybe in the future pigs can be used not only for meat, but also for medical-related research
    .
    For the development of the pig industry, it is also a road worth exploring
    .
    " Jinlong said
    .
    (Source: China Science News Zhang Qingdan Zhang Zhe)

    Related paper information: https://doi.
    org/10.
    1038/s41467-021-23560-8

    https://doi.
    org/10.
    1038/s41467-021-23560-8
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