Effects of Alternating Electric Field Assisted Freezing-Thawing-Aging Sequence on Data-Independent Acquisition Quantitative Proteomics of Muscle.

This study was designed to investigate the differences in the proteomes of bovine (LD) muscle during an alternating electric field (AEF)-assisted freezing-thawing-aging sequence based on a data-independent acquisition strategy. When compared to that of the only postmortem aging (OA) group, the meat quality of the freezing-thawing-aging sequence (FA) and AEF-assisted freezing-thawing-aging sequence (EA) groups showed a declining trend. However, the group assisted by AEF was significantly enhanced in color, water-holding capacity, and tenderness. Three hundred fifty-two proteins in LD muscle were differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) among FA, EA, and OA treatments. Furthermore, among the 40 DAPs in the FA versus EA comparison, 5 DAPs with variable importance in projection scores higher than 1 were identified as biochemical markers of beef quality. Bioinformatic analysis revealed that most of these proteins were involved in structural constituents of ribosome and catalytic activity. These results provide a basis for further understanding the quality of beef following a freezing-thawing-aging sequence assisted by AEF.