Following the Principal Component Analysis with data
from young bulls slaughtered year 1, initial and overall
tenderness scores were shown to be associated with the
expression of some specific genes of the heat shock protein
(HSP) family. Thanks to correlation analyses, expression
levels of 6 genes were found to be negatively
associated with beef tenderness (Table 3) with the highest
correlation coefficients (|r| > 0.40). In particular,
DNAJA1 expression was negatively correlated with initial
or overall beef tenderness (r = -0.48 to -0.59) in young
bulls of the reference group as previously observed [12].
These 6 genes explain up to 49-50% of