Integrated Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analysis Reveals VASH1 Influences Pork Quality by Regulating Skeletal Muscle Glycolysis

Glycolytic potential (GP) is an important index for evaluating meat quality in the pig industry, since high muscle glycogen content generally leads to rapid postmortem glycolysis, which contributes to low meat quality. The natural differences in meat quality between Chinese local pigs (good meat quality) and Western pigs (standard meat quality) make them the ideal models for glycolysis research. Here, we investigated the mechanisms of glycolysis through comparing transcriptome and metabolome data of biceps femoris (BF) muscle between Jinhua (JH) and Landrace × Yorkshire (LY) pigs at different ages. In this research, JH pigs exhibited lower intramuscular glycogen content than LY pigs throughout the growth period (<i>p</i> < 0.05). Increased phosphorylated glycogen synthase (<i>p</i>-GS) expression indicated reduced glycogenesis capacity in JH pigs. Pathway enrichment revealed that the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were highly enriched in glycolysis, glycogenesis, and TCA cycle pathways, but these metabolic pathways were suppressed in JH pigs. Metabolomic analysis identified increased lipids and amino acids, but carbohydrate metabolites were decreased in JH pigs. Through integrating transcriptome and metabolome data, <i>VASH1</i> was identified as a biomarker of muscle glycolysis. Mechanistically, <i>VASH1</i> knockdown promoted glucose metabolism through enhancing glycolysis and glycogenesis via the AMPK signaling pathway. Our findings provided novel insights into the genetic basis of meat quality and identify <i>VASH1</i> as a potential target for genetic selection to improve muscle glycolytic level and pork quality.