Association of functional sequence variants of the myosin heavy chain 3 gene with muscle collagen content in pigs.

This study examined the association between functional sequence variants (FSVs) of () genotypes and collagen content in a Landrace and Jeju native pig (JNP) crossbred population. Four muscles (, , , and ) were used for the analysis of meat collagen content, and the same animals were genotyped for the FSVs of the gene by using PCR-RFLP (polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism). Three FSVs of genotypes were identified and had genotype frequencies of 0.358, 0.551, and 0.091 for , , and , respectively. animals for the FSVs of the genotypes showed higher collagen content in their ( < 0.001), ( < 0.001), ( < 0.001), and ( < 0.001) than homozygous animals. After the validation of this result in other independent populations, the FSVs of MYH3 genotypes can be a valuable genetic marker for improving collagen content in porcine muscles and can also be applied to increase the amount of collagen for biomedical purposes.