Research

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Research at the Muscle Food Biochemistry Lab

Research Focus

Our muscle food biochemistry research explores how noninfectious animal disease, feed additives, feeding system, heat stress, and muscle type transmit biological impacts from skeletal muscle into the quality of fresh meat. Specifically, our projects

  • Explore how protein cleavage and mitochondrial function during the postmortem period affect meat quality development.
  • Optimize proteomic approaches to identify protein lipoxidation (“protein aging”) in biological tissues.
  • Develop low-cost, high-speed, and accurate early-phase diagnosis omic workflows to identify animal disease and product quality variation.
  • Apply machine learning algorithms to identify protein-metabolite interactions responsible for fresh meat quality variation.

Laboratory Spaces

  • Biochemistry lab (George White Building): Equipped with full capacity of in-situ/in-vitro mitochondrial respiration and protein chemistry analyses.
  • Food Sensory lab (Ratcliffe Hicks Building): Under renovation
  • Meats Lab (Ratcliffe Hicks Building): Under renovation

Active Research Grants

  • Effect of vitamin E supplementation on production efficiency and product quality of feedlot steers with different pulmonary arterial pressures. USDA
  • Protein lipoxidation in bovine skeletal muscles and fresh beef with differing meat color stability. USDA

Publications