In our project, we are testing muscle proteins from the leg
and breast muscles of turkey, chicken and duck to analyze there fast and slow
twitch muscles to see how they correlate with each other.
We are testing the different muscles from turkey, chicken
and ducks to see if the meat from breast and leg meat will have any
similarities between different types of birds.
The breast from the turkey and chicken meat is lighter meaning that they
are fast twitch and the leg is darker indicating slow twitch muscle. Then since
ducks are flying birds they use their breast muscles to flap their wings and
fly, so are mostly dark meat (Lynch 2014). Therefore,
duck meat should have a closer resemblance to the leg meat in the other bird’s
meat. Then the breast meat from the chicken and turkey should have a
close resemblance of each other.
The properties of the muscle that gives it the color of
light or dark is due to the protein myoglobin which stores oxygen. The more
myoglobin proteins there are in the meat cells then the darker it is. The
purpose of having more myoglobin in the dark meat is because the dark meat is
slow twitch muscle fibers which can endure lots of long time energy and to be
able to achieve that you need oxygen to be able to power these muscles for long
activity. Then there is the slow twitch that don’t have a lot of myoglobin and
they don’t need it because they just need a little bit of energy because these
muscles aren’t meant to sustain activity they just give out short fast bursts
of energy therefore only using a smaller quantity of oxygen stored and
produced.
References:
Lynch, Dennis. "Thanksgiving Turkey 2014: What Is The
Difference Between Dark Meat And White Meat?" International Business
Times. N.p., 27 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.
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