Investigation of effects of the MKK3 and MKK6 genes on meat production traits in the pig (Brief Report)

Abstract. Skeletal muscle development is a complexity process involved in spatial and temporal expressions of numerous muscle differentiation-specific genes, which are controlled by a series of basic helix-loop-helix myogenic regulatory factors (MRFs) (HOUBA and TE PAS 2004). The recent studies have demonstrated that the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is probably one of the major intracellular signaling pathways affecting myogenesis (KEREN et al. 2006, LIUÍS et al. 2006). The p38 MAPKs regulate the transcriptional activities of MRFs and function in the remodeling of chromatin at specific muscle-regulatory regions (LI et al. 2000, ZARUBIN et al. 2005). The genes involved in the p38 MAPK pathway have been poorly studied in pigs. The primary work on SNP discovery and association analyses of two important MAPK kinases encoding genes MKK3 (MAP2K3) and MKK6 (MAP2K6) was presented in the study, so as to identify the potential genetic markers useful for marker assisted selection (MAS) improving lean meat production.