Proteomics to advance meat research: Mapping and integrating biomarker-pathway interactions underlying beef marbling, color, and tenderness in longissimus muscle

Quality attributes of fresh meat represent crucial determinants shaping consumer perception and satisfaction, directly influencing purchase decisions and economic value. Over the last two decades, proteomics has enabled a deeper investigation of multiple beef quality traits, allowing to decipher the unknowns and elucidate biochemical mechanisms underlying post-mortem muscle processes and meat tenderization. Furthermore, increasing attention has been directed toward the identification of biomarkers capable of understanding biochemical changes in post-mortem muscle and their use for predicting the potential meat quality. Based on an integromics study, this work reviews on one hand the proteomic evidence on beef marbling, color, and tenderness to investigate the biological mechanisms underpinning beef quality, and on the other hand elucidates both common and trait-specific molecular pathways and compile recurrent protein biomarkers for multi-trait beef quality. A database has been built from 43 eligible proteomic-based studies with a focus on bovine longissimus muscle. From this dataset, a total of 79 putative biomarkers were identified, among which 11 were consistently identified across the three quality traits, representing a putative set of biomarkers for multi-trait beef quality. The key protein biomarkers generated in this integromics and the related biochemical pathways revealed thanks to innovative and adapted bioinformatics analyses have been thoroughly discussed. The most prominent include catalytic, metabolism & ATP metabolic processes, particularly those related to glycolysis, as well as muscle contraction, structure & associated proteins. These are followed by pathways involving chaperones and heat shock proteins, binding, transport & calcium homeostasis, oxidative stress, and proteolysis. However, differences in their relative contributions were observed across the different beef quality traits.