LAUSR

Chicken breast meat is one of the most sustainable and affordable sources of animal protein making it one of the most popular protein sources globally. As such, maintaining consistency in product quality is of the utmost importance. Over the last decade three novel myopathies have been identified in broilers (White striping (WS), Wooden breast (WB) and Spaghetti breast (SB)) (Soglia et al., 2019; Baldi et al., 2021; Barbut and Leishman, 2022); there has been a wealth of research across the poultry sector to understand their aetiology. These myopathies can be found together or individually in all broiler chicken breeds in all global regions (Lorenzi et al., 2014; Barbut, 2019; Soglia et al., 2019; Che et al., 2022a); the incidence and severity varies (Petracci et al., 2019; Che et al., 2022b) making them a complex area of study. The exact aetiology of the myopathies is still not fully understood however a wide range of studies have used gene expression (Velleman and Clark, 2015; Zambonelli et al., 2016), proteomics (Kuttappan et al., 2017) and metabolomics (Boerboom et al., 2018) in an effort to characterise and understand the underlying biology. These studies have shown that muscle affected by the myopathies have an increased expression of genes associated with a range of metabolic, anatomical, and structural biological processes. Whilst the three myopathies are distinct from each other, the current understanding indicates a common root in hypoxia and oxidative stress resulting in disturbed growth and development within in the muscle (Petracci et al., 2019; Soglia et al., 2021). Whilst these studies indicate what is occurring in the affected muscle at the point of sampling it is still not clear what the initial triggers are.