Beef is one of the leading sources of protein, B vitamins, iron, and zinc in human food. Beef palatability is based on three general criteria: tenderness, juiciness, and flavor, of which tenderness is thought to be the most important factor. In this study, we found that beef tenderness, measured by the Warner-Bratzler shear force (WBSF), was dramatically increased by acute stress. Microarray analysis and qPCR identified a variety of genes that were differentially expressed. Pathway analysis showed that these genes were involved in immune response and regulation of metabolism process as activators or repressors. Further analysis identified that these changes may be related with CpG methylation of several genes. Therefore, the results from this study provide an enhanced understanding of the mechanisms that genetic and epigenetic regulations control meat quality and beef tenderness. 1. Introduction Beef is a source of high-quality nutrition for human populations. Beef palatability is generally determined by three general criteria: tenderness, juiciness, and flavor. Of these factors, beef consumers usually consider tenderness as the most important palatability trait leading to a good eating experience [1–3]. Inconsistency in tenderness has been reported as the most important factor in determining consumer satisfaction with beef quality [4–9]. It is well known that beef tenderness is influenced not only by genetic factors but also environmental aspects. Many studies have been performed on beef quality and tenderness, identifying various important candidate genes [10, 11], quantitative trait loci (QTL), and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) [12–20]. High-throughput transcriptomics and proteomics were also used to explore the mechanism of controlling beef quality and tenderness [21–27]. These researches focused much attention on genetic factors influencing beef tenderness. Anecdotally, farmers found that beef produced by cattle which suffered from acute stress, such as injury, surgery, or hardware disease, has much lower quality compared to beef from normal cattle [28–31]. This phenomenon like hardware disease may occur often; therefore the underlying mechanism needs to be explored to better understand what drives beef tenderness and to ultimately improve profitability and efficiency of beef production. So far, we have not seen research which examines the mechanisms of beef quality alteration attributed to acute stress. In this experiment, we found an acute stress event that altered beef tenderness. Since stress is a general phenomenon in beef industry,
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