title: Apoptosis in muscle-to-meat aging process: The omic witness.
abstract: Meat derives from a muscle that undergoes a great number of biochemical and physiological changes. The anoxic condition established from the moment of animal sacrifice forces muscle cells to a sort of reaction, resulting in methodical programmed cell death to avoid necrosis. The duality autophagy and/or apoptosis is at the center of the scientific debate about the biological processes driving the muscle to meat conversion. Here we report an omic time course overview carried on proteome, phosphoproteome and metabolome of Piedmontese longissimus thoracis muscle searching for clues helping us to extricate through the dilemma. The survey depicts a progressive physiological impairing and our evidences push towards the apoptotic behavior: the proteomic time course trend of annexin A2, RKIP, HSPB6, αB crystalline, adenylate kinase, DJ-1 and 31kDa actin fragment; the 0-1day increased phosphorylation of myosin 2 and synaptopodin and the metabolomic time course trend of key metabolic indicators, like GSH/GSSG ratio, taurine and nitrotyrosine. The employed techniques provide strong indications about the likely apoptotic behavior of aging meat in muscle-to-meat conversion process.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our work underlines compelling evidences of the apoptotic behavior of Piedmontese beef muscle cells undergoing the muscle-to-meat process, whereas no autophagic clues are inferred from this omic investigation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Largo dell'Università snc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy.
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Longo
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Largo dell'Università snc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lana
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterinary Sciences, University of Turin, via Leonardo da Vinci, 44, 10095 Grugliasco, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Bottero
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Largo dell'Università snc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy. Electronic address: zolla@unitus.it.
authors.forename: Lello
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zolla
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis; D002417:Cattle; D008460:Meat; D009124:Muscle Proteins / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry*; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D009124:Muscle Proteins
keywords: Apoptosis; Autophagy; Beef meat aging; Metabolomics; Phosphoproteomics; Proteomics