Postmortem Proteolysis of Breast and Leg Muscles from Taiwan Colored Chickens and Silkie Bantams

Tsai, Shih-Fen; Lin, Chia-Ying; Lu, Jin-Jenn; Chou, Rong-Ghi R.

doi:2006.19.5.739

Article

Animal Products

Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences 2006;19(5): 739-743.
https://doi.org/10.5713/ajas.2006.739 Published online March 29, 2006.

Postmortem Proteolysis of Breast and Leg Muscles from Taiwan Colored Chickens and Silkie Bantams

Shih-Fen Tsai, Chia-Ying Lin, Jin-Jenn Lu, Rong-Ghi R. Chou^*

Correspondence: Rong-Ghi R. Chou,

Abstract

Postmortem proteolysis of breast (BM) and leg (LM) muscles from Taiwan colored chickens (TCC) and silkie bantams (SB) at 5째C were compared. Myofibrils were prepared from BM and LM samples that were randomly taken from the carcasses of SB and TCC after 0, 1, 3, 7 and 14 days of storage at 5째C. pH of samples was determined, and degradation of myofibrillar proteins was analyzed by the SDS-PAGE and western blots. The results showed that pH was lower in BM than in LM samples from both avian strains. Appearance of 30 kDa components and disappearance of titin and nebulin were more rapidly as seen on SDS-PAGE in BM than in LM samples. Western blots labeled with a monoclonal antibody to desmin also demonstrated that desmin degraded more quickly in BM samples. Our data might suggest that postmortem proteolysis occurred more rapidly in BM than in LM from both TCC and SB.

Keywords: Taiwan Colored Chickens; Silky Bantam; Postmortem Proteolysis