Identification of troponin I and actin, alpha cardiac muscle 1 as potential biomarkers for hearts of electrically stimulated chickens

Proteomics analyses using 2D Platinum ImageMaster 6.0 and Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF) identified troponin I and alpha cardiac muscle actin 1 in the electrically stimulated heart samples. The overexpression of the proteins was further confirmed at the transcriptional level by Real Time PCR.The results from MALDI-TOF and Real Time PCR agreed; therefore, this method for identifying biomarkers of electrically stimulated chicken hearts provides a novel approach for differentiation the hearts of increased electrically stimulated chickens from those of non-stunned chickens.Stunning is used to induce unconsciousness in animals prior to exsanguinations and slaughter. Standards for stunning may vary from one country to another. In certain countries, such as Malaysia, the standard for stunning is minimized because animals must be alive during the slaughtering process to meet the Muslim requirements for food production. The same situation is also experienced in kosher food production. Stunning by high voltage and current may introduce cardiac fibrillation in animals and lead to death; therefore, the need to study the effect of an increased current and voltage on biological systems during the stunning procedure has arisen. Unlike DNA, which is stable and static, protein expression is dynamic and influenced by both internal and external stimuli. In this study, immobilization was considered to be one type of external stimulus that excites the expression and regulation of proteins in electrically stimulated chickens.Proteomics is a widely used tool in biomarker identification, especially in studies of disease development and cancer. A biomarker is a substance found in the blood, urine, cerebrospinal fluid, or tissues and is often detected in abnormally high amounts in samples from animals with certain diseases or conditions [1]. For many diseases, such as cancer, protein function is altered in the context of key sign