The strategy so far has been to identify genes or pro-
teins that are expressed differentially between animals
displaying extreme quality attributes without any prior
knowledge of the processes involved. Previous pro-
grammes funded by APIS-GENE and the French Na-
tional Agency for Research have described new genes
associated with growth potential, beef tenderness or fla-
vor ([1,2], for a review, see, [10]). One of these results
concerning expression of the
DNAJA1
gene was patented
[11]. The GENOTEND programme aimed to validate the
relationship between expression of these genes and beef
quality attributes, including tenderness and flavor. To
achieve this objective, we designed an Agilent chip with
specific probes for the bovine muscular genes known to
be involved in muscle growth (including energy and pro-
tein metabolism), carcass composition, fat metabolism
and beef quality (including marbling). Our objective here
was to confirm the use of this new genomic tool to pre-
dict meat quality by looking at the previously identified
relationships ([12]; for a review, see, [10]) between beef
tenderness and expression of genes belonging to two
families (heat shock proteins and energy metabolism)