Caracterização do consumo e emprego de técnicas moleculares na detecção da maciez da carne bovina

Abstract

The beef sector today forms an important supply chain, with strong interaction mainly to sectors related to agribusiness, genetic, commerce and culture. The objectives of this thesis were to characterize the consumption of beef in the city of Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and to use molecular methods for detecting the level of expression of genes of tenderness (calpain and calpastatin) in different muscles bovine and search SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphism) aimed at defining quality meat product and markets consumers demanding. It was observed that the profile of consumers of beef population is directly related to the cultural aspects and socioeconomic conditions, which influence the commercialization process. Still, as preliminary results did not show statistically significant differences in gene expression of calpain and calpastatin of different muscles analyzed. Found a SNP that modifies a site of a possible union of microRNA, may alter the stability of the RNA, and then have an effect on the character of the tenderness of beef. Considering the need of the consumer market in assessing meat produced, it is necessary to know the economic characteristics of the product to be consumed, as well as standardize and implement more sophisticated techniques for evaluating the texture and tenderness of the meat.