Use of-omics technologies toward profitability and beef consumers' satisfaction

加拿大牛肉生产商有巨大的机会来满足全球对高质量动物蛋白产品日益增长的需求。然而，饲料成本高和质量不稳定仍然是重大挑战。研究人员正在通过使用DNA面板来解决这些挑战，使动物能够根据DNA图谱进行选择和专门管理，以提高生产效率和产品质量。加拿大的牛肉质量审计继续将牛肉的嫩度确定为消费者对牛肉质量的首要关注。如果牛肉更嫩，消费者就会愿意花更多的钱购买牛肉，并更频繁地购买牛肉。尽管饲料效率和牛肉质量对该行业来说是巨大的挑战和机遇，但直到最近随着基因组学技术的发展，该行业通过改进基因来解决这些问题的能力几乎是不可能的。对这些性状进行遗传改良的传统方法并不成功，因为这些性状太昂贵且难以测量。这项研究旨在改进可用的基因组工具，以提高选择效率，并解决对消费者和牛肉生产商重要的新性状。这个项目汇集了一个经验丰富的加拿大团队来开发这些新的机会。结合新的高通量组学技术，如转录组学与表型/基因型数据和系统生物学方法中的功能信息，将更全面地了解涉及经济上重要性状（如嫩度）的基因、调控途径和因果突变，并将这些综合信息整合到遗传改良计划中，以提高加拿大牛肉产业的竞争力。

Canadian beef producers have a tremendous opportunity to meet the increasing global demand for high quality animal protein products. However, high feed costs and inconsistent quality remain significant challenges. Research has been underway towards addressing these challenges through the use of DNA panels to allow animals to be selected and specifically managed according to DNA profile to increase the production efficiency and product quality. Beef quality audits in Canada continue to identify beef tenderness as the number one quality concern consumers have with beef. If beef was more consistently tender, consumers would be willing to pay more for beef and purchase it more often. Although feed efficiency and beef quality represent tremendous challenges and opportunities for the industry, the ability of the industry to address these through improved genetics has been almost impossible until very recently with the development of genomics technologies. Traditional approaches to genetic improvement for these traits are not successful as the traits are too expensive and difficult to measure. This research is designed to improve the genomic tools available to increase selection efficiency and address new traits of importance for consumers and with benefit to beef producers.This project brings together an experienced Canadian team to exploit these new opportunities. The combination of the new high-throughput -OMICS technologies such as transcriptomics with phenotype/genotype data and functional information within a systems biology approach will result in a more complete understanding of the genes, regulatory pathways and causal mutations involved in economically important traits such tenderness, and integrate this comprehensive information for use in genetic improvement programs to improve the competitiveness of the Canadian beef industry.