Chicken breast meat defects studied with omics methods
What it found
Broiler breast meat defects like woody breast, white striping, spaghetti meat and gaping have become more common since around 2010.
Lab methods called omics have been used to find molecular differences between defective and normal breast meat.
What they found
Animal and lab studies
Omics finds differences
Omics methods have shown compositional, genetic and biochemical differences between myopathic and normal breast meat.
Factors and causes
Omics research has provided information on the factors that contribute to these myopathies and their potential causes.
Telling meat apart
Omics methods have let researchers and the industry tell chicken breast meat with myopathic muscle apart from meat without it.
Genes and environment
Environmental and genetic conditions contribute to differences in biochemical pathways that lead to the features of these myopathies.
Other findings
Rise in defects
Broiler breast meat myopathies, including woody breast meat, white striping, spaghetti meat and gaping, have increased in prevalence in the broiler meat industry starting in approximately 2010.
What the authors conclude
“Omic methods have been used to elucidate compositional, genetic, and biochemical differences between myopathic and normal breast meat and have provided information on the factors that contribute to these myopathies.”
Also in their conclusions
- They summarise poultry meat quality defects, also called myopathies, that have been evaluated using omics methods.
- They report that genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and other methods have been used to understand the genetic predisposition, protein expression and biochemical pathways linked to woody breast meat, white striping and other myopathies.
How it was done
The authors wanted to pull together omics research on what causes these chicken breast meat defects and what factors contribute to them.
They reviewed genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and other omics studies that compared myopathic and normal chicken breast meat.
What it can’t tell you
- We summarised it from the abstract only.
- This is a review of lab studies on chicken meat, not a study in people.
- It cannot show what causes these defects in a live bird, only what has been linked to them in lab tests.
Who paid
- Authors work at
- Mississippi State University, United States of America
The paper
- Title
- Study of emerging chicken meat quality defects using OMICs: What do we know?
- Type
- ReviewThe authors read earlier studies and describe what they found. It isn’t a new study.
- Evidence
- Animals and lab studies
- Summarised from
- Abstract only
- Cite
- Zhang X, Smith SW, Zaldivar LR, Lesak DJ, Schilling MW (2023). Study of emerging chicken meat quality defects using OMICs: What do we know?. Journal of proteomics. doi:10.1016/j.jprot.2023.104837PubMed 36781045DOI
Summary written 26 Sep 2026. Check it against the paper before it changes what you eat. How we summarise papers · Report an error