Proteomic technologies and their applications in the meat industry

The postgenomic era witnessed an exponential increase in the application of proteomics in agricultural sciences. The emergence of mass spectrometry as a robust technique to ionize macromolecules, advances in gel electrophoresis, and ever expanding protein databases profusely contributed to this growth. In meat research, the high through-put proteomic techniques rendered themselves as powerful tools to examine the molecular mechanisms governing conversion of muscle to meat, tenderization, meat color stability, and dry-curing. Characterizing the proteome basis of meat quality will enable industry to engineer novel processing strategies and to cater high quality meat to the growing number of consumers across the world.