Dipartimento di Scienze Veterinarie - DSV

Descrizione del progetto

Animal welfare is a pillar of the ‘food quality concept’. A fundamental issue of farm animal welfare is to keep animals clinically healthy, limiting diseases and stress, to contribute in producing safe and high-quality food. Circulating miRNAs may be considered among the most promising biomarkers for the identification of stress-related disorders in animals, becoming valid tools to assess welfare overtime in the animal’s life, with the potential to be also additional factors to score the quality of animals’ products along the food supply chain.
The project aims to investigate the use of c-miRNA as molecular biomarkers to assess quantitatively the stress in beef cattle during fattening period throught:

1. correlation among different stocking density, group size, and consequent cattle behaviours inducing skeletal muscle injuries and c-miRNAs patterns
2. definition of c-miRNAs signature of beef cattle welfare based on health, behavioural, physiological and performances parameters (animal weight, meat production traits and quality).
3. identification of molecular role of c-miRNAs on a skeletal muscle cell model in vitro.

The project has innovative application potentialities related the identification of new biomarkers to assess cattle welfare and the use of imaging tools in vivo to define meat production traits important for the product quality such as the marbling score.