The estimates for the relationship

The estimates for the relationship between calpastatin activity and meat tenderness vary, but up to 40% of the variation in beef tenderness is explained by calpastatin activity at 1-day postmortem . Such a high degree of association could be the justification for using calpastatin in a candidate gene approach for predicting meat tenderness. The drawbacks to the candidate gene approach are twofold. Undoubtedly, more than one gene is involved in regulation of tenderness and this approach only allows for examination of one gene at a time. Secondly, the factors affecting the expression of the gene of interest could be located on an entirely different chromosome; thus, such regulatory factors would not be identified in a candidate gene approach.