Journal of Integrative Agriculture ›› 2026, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (8): 3368-3378.DOI: 10.1016/j.jia.2024.08.008

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骨骼肌纤维的精确量化揭示了肉鸡生长速度差异的生理基础

  

  • 收稿日期:2024-04-13 修回日期:2024-08-20 接受日期:2024-07-16 出版日期:2026-08-20 发布日期:2026-07-08

Precise quantification of skeletal muscle fibers reveals the physiological basis for growth rate discrepancies in broilers

Shuang Gu1, 2, Chaoyi Wang1, 2, Qiang Huang1, 2, Qiulian Wang1, 2, Junying Li1, 2, 3, Congjiao Sun1, 2, 3, Chaoliang Wen1, 2, 3, Ning Yang1, 2, 3#   

  1. 1 State Key Laboratory of Animal Biotech Breeding/Frontier Science Center for Molecular Design Breeding, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China

    2 National Engineering Laboratory for Animal Breeding/Key Laboratory of Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs/Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China

    3 Sanya Institute of China Agricultural University, Hainan 572025, China

  • Received:2024-04-13 Revised:2024-08-20 Accepted:2024-07-16 Online:2026-08-20 Published:2026-07-08
  • About author:Shuang Gu, E-mail: 13592566171@163.com; #Correspondence Ning Yang, E-mail: nyang@cau.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the Key Research and Development Program of Hainan Province, China (ZDYF2023XDNY036) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFF1000204).

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摘要：

肌纤维作为骨骼肌的基本结构和功能单位，其组织特性对于畜禽产肉量和肉品质的提升，以及肌肉发育研究具有重要意义。传统肌肉发育研究中通常以切片局部图像测得的肌纤维横截面积和密度等指标来评估肌纤维组织学特性，然而骨骼肌内肌纤维的总数是衡量其发育水平的关键。对于肌纤维总数来说，传统的定量方法通常是以局部数据代替或推算整体，这存在精度不高、效率低等局限。针对这一难题，本课题组前期建立了一套成熟的切片制作流程，并基于深度学习技术开发了肌纤维自动量化工具MyoV，能够对骨骼肌肌纤维进行大批量且精准的量化分析。基于此，本研究旨在精确测定不同生长速度肉鸡胸大肌中肌纤维总数，探索家禽肌肉发育的生理基础，并为畜禽肌肉研究提供宝贵数据。

试验选取慢速生长型（SL）、中速生长型（ML）和快速生长型（FL）肉鸡的种蛋进行孵化，从14胚龄开始，每日测量三组鸡胚的体重、胸重和腿重，直至19胚龄。孵化完成后，在出雏当天、7日龄和35日龄分别选取公母各20、10、20只鸡进行生长性能测定，并在7日龄和35日龄进行肌纤维组织学测定。结果发现，从胚胎期至生长期，FL组肉鸡比ML和SL生长更快，胸大肌的全景切片结果表明，FL和ML组的肌纤维总数显著高于SL组（P < 0.01）。在7日龄时，FL、ML和SL组的胸大肌肌纤维总数分别是693,568.00 ± 54,169.80、652,122.00 ± 65,822.60、539,778.57 ± 40,722.94根；在35日龄时三组肉鸡的胸大肌肌纤维总数分别是663,014.93 ± 58,801.11、645,784.76 ± 80,204.34和507,280.29 ± 98,092.16根。肌纤维横截面积的组间差异结果与肌纤维总数的结果一致。生长性能与肌纤维组织学特性的相关性分析显示，肉鸡体重与胸大肌肌纤维总数的相关系数为0.73-0.89，与胸大肌肌纤维横截面积的相关系数为0.78-0.87。

快速生长型肉鸡骨骼肌包含的肌纤维数量更多，且出雏后肌纤维肥大速度更快，这是肉鸡快速发育的生理基础。本研究首次实现了对不同生长速度肉鸡生长性能及肌纤维总数的精确量化，填补了家禽肌纤维总数测定数据的空白，也为进一步深入研究肌纤维发育提供了重要数据支持。

Abstract:

Skeletal muscle is composed of multinucleated muscle fibers, which play a crucial role in determining the quality of meat products in livestock.  Quantifying the total number of muscle fibers (TNM) is essential for understanding muscle composition, but this remains challenging in poultry, particularly since the considerable number of livestock complicates the preparation of tissue sections for analysis and makes the counting process laborious.  Our previous study developed an automatic muscle fiber quantification tool powered by deep learning, named MyoV, which has addressed this bottleneck.  This study employed the MyoV tool for accurately quantifying TNM in the pectoral muscles of slow-growing (SL), medium-growing (ML), and fast-growing (FL) broilers.  The results showed that FL group exhibited higher growth performance compared to ML and SL groups from the embryonic to rearing stages.  Processing of whole slide images of pectoral muscle revealed significantly higher TNM in FL and ML groups than in SL group (P<0.01).  The TNM values of FL, ML and SL groups were 693,568.00±54,169.80, 652,122.00±65,822.60, and 539,778.57±40,722.94 at 7 days of age (D7), respectively; and 663,014.93±58,801.11, 645,784.76±80,204.34 and 507,280.29±98,092.16 at D35 for FL, ML and SL groups, respectively.  Differences in the cross-sectional area (CSA) of muscle fibers among the three groups were consistent with the TNM results.  A correlation analysis showed correlation coefficients of 0.73–0.89 between body weight (BW) and TNM and 0.78–0.87 between BW and CSA.  These findings directly indicate that the number of muscle fibers in broilers is an important foundation for their rapid growth and development.  This study precisely quantified the muscle fiber number of an important skeletal muscle in poultry for the first time, which provides direct evidence for the physiological basis of rapid development in broilers and offers important data support for further in-depth studies on muscle fiber development.

Key words: broiler , growth performance ,  precision quantification ,  total number of muscle fiber