Characteristic of selected genes controlling meat quality in pigs . A review

For many years, pig breeders have concentrated their pig improvement efforts on producing a population characterized by adequate meatiness. Development of molecular genetics techniques resulted in the detection of genes with major effects in quantitative traits. Segregation analysis of numerous microsatellite markers, evenly distributed throughout the genome, and variation of a productive trait in the reference family, may help to identify the chromosome region in which the major gene locus probably occurs. This analysis has led to the identification in pigs of over 2 262 DNA microsatellite markers, and 1 381 genes, amoung others FAT1, RYR1, RN-, LEP, LEPR GH IGFs, MyoD family genes presented in this articile which are significantly correlated to meat quality, carcass quality or growth rate.