A sensitised mutagenesis screen in the mouse to explore the bovine genome: study of muscle characteristics

Abstract

Meat yield and quality are closely related to muscle development. The muscle characteristics mainly take place during embryonic and postnatal phases. Thus, genetic control of muscle development in early stages represents a significant stake to improve product quality and production efficiency. In bovine, several programmes have been developed to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting growth, carcass composition or meat quality traits. Such strategy is incontestably very powerful yet extremely cumbersome and costly when dealing with large animals such as ruminants. Furthermore, the fine mapping of the QTL remains a real challenge. Here, we proposed an alternative approach based on chemical mutagenesis in the mouse combined with comparative genomics to identify regions or genes controlling muscle development in cattle. At present, we isolated seven independent mouse lines of high interest. Two lines exhibit a hypermuscular phenotype, and the other five show various skeletomuscular phenotypes. Detailed characterisation of these mouse mutants will give crucial input for the identification and the mapping of genes that control muscular development. Our strategy will provide the opportunity to understand the function and control of genes involved in improvement of animal physiology.

Keywords

• animal models
• mutagenesis
• myostatin
• muscle development
• cattle