Challenges and Applications of Proteomics for Analysis of Changes in Early Postmortem Meat

The proteomics studies made on the post-mortem changes in meat clearly illustrate its large potential in meat research. Proteomics has especially proved to be a powerful tool to investigate post-mortem protein degradation in meat because it provides valuable information about the complex mechanisms behind post-mortem proteolysis. However, it is important to emphasize that the proteome of a muscle cell or a meat product is extremely complex and that none of the proteomic methods are capable of profiling a complete proteome. Moreover, all methods in proteomics are very complicated and time consuming and only a limited number of samples can be analyzed in each experiment. Hence, it is often necessary to perform several different proteomics studies to reveal a specific mechanism.