Association of CAST Gene Polymorphisms with Carcass and Meat Quality Traits in Chinese Commercial Cattle Herds (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Calpastatin (CAST), initially identified in skeletal muscle by Busch et al. (1972), is the endogenous inhibitor of the calpains (Goll et al., 2003), which can remove the Z-disc from the skeletal muscle myofibrils in the presence of [Ca.sup.2+] and play an important role in post-mortem tenderization of meat (Goll, 1974; Richard et al., 1995). Thus, the calpastatin functions as a regulator of the rate and extent of post-mortem tenderization (Koohmaraie, 1994; Koohmaraie et al., 1995). The bovine CAST gene, mapped to BTA 7 (Bishop et al., 1993), has a relationship with a QTL for shear force and has been proposed as a positional and functional candidate gene for this QTL (Choi et al., 2006; Drinkwater et al., 2006; Davis et al., 2008).