Muscle lipid content : a complex balance between various metabolic pathways

Abstract

Muscle lipid content plays a key role in various quality traits of meat and meat-derived products, including sensory acceptability. Different factors are involved in the variation of muscle lipid content in animals at commercial slaughter, including genotype, gender, age, and feeding. However, the underlying metabolic pathways and(or) the putative involved genes still remain to be clarified. Recent studies have put light on the importance of fatty acid fluxes and metabolic balance between various pathways, rather than the control of one single pathway, to be responsible for variability in muscle lipid content during the postnatal period. Early events that determine the number of intramuscular adipocytes (i.e., proliferation and differentiation of adipose cells) would be rather involved in breed and(or) selection-related differences in muscle lipid content. New targets may be identified in the future using transcriptomic and proteomic approaches, to control muscle lipid content independently of body or carcass fatness.