Allelic variation of the bovine calpastatin (CAST) gene.

摘要

Calpastatin (CAST) is a specific inhibitor of calpains and is believed to be involved in the degradation of myofibrillar proteins in post-mortem proteolysis through regulating calpain activity , and hence it is implicated in meat tenderization.In beef cattle, two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been identified in the CAST gene, a G/C SNP in intron 5 and an A/G SNP in the 3' UTR region . These SNPs are currently used as the Igenity TenderGene marker and GeneSTAR tests, respectively, as they have been shown to be associated with meat tenderness [5-7]. However, no sequence variation in the coding region of the bovine CAST gene has been reported to date.