Protein phosphorylation and meat quality, written by Prof Zhang Dequan and his team of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, CAAS, has published in Springer. The book was supported by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China “Molecular mechanism of meat quality regulated by the interaction between energy metabolism and protein post-translational modifications (Grant No. 32030086)” and Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program “meat processing and quality regulation (CAAS-ASTIP-IFST)”.

Meat quality is an important characteristic that determines the value of meat products and economic benefits. Although research has been performed on different aspects of meat quality, meat quality issues still exist because meat quality is complex and controlled by many factors and mechanisms. Protein phosphorylation is regarded as one of the most common protein post-translational modifications that is considered universal across all the domains of life. In the field of meat science, the role of protein phosphorylation in meat quality characteristics is gaining great interest and more studies.

The book is divided into three parts preceded by an introduction and background chapter providing an overview of meat quality mechanism, protein post-translational modifications on meat quality, and current research of protein phosphorylation in live and postmortem. The first section gave a brief introduction of the methods used for protein phosphorylation detection and discussed the relationship between protein phosphorylation and meat quality attributes of color, tenderness, and water holding capacity. The second section elucidated possible mechanisms of the effects of protein phosphorylation on meat quality from the aspects of glycolysis, myofibril protein degradation, calpain activity, and myoglobin. The third section focused on the improvement of meat quality by regulating protein phosphorylation, which included the effects of temperature and ionic strength on protein phosphorylation and three novel technologies.

This book is based on the achievements of our research focused on protein phosphorylation and meat quality. The aim was to provide new ideas for exploring the mechanism of meat quality and possible solutions for improvement of meat quality.