Profile

My primary research area is muscle physiology in live muscles and its significance to the post mortem processes and subsequently to meat quality. My work is based on the following questions:

• which morphological and physiological preconditions are necessary to obtain an optimum meat quality or individual quality characteristics
• how do various kinds of stress affect the muscles and thus the preconditions
• how and to which extent does anaesthetization influence the muscle physiological conditions

The research includes all meat-producing animal species, and comparative studies are performed between as well as within species and also within the individual animal.

For the morphological analyses the image processing software TEMA, which I have developed in cooperation with ScanBeam, Hadsund, Denmark. Now TEMA is used by many research institutes worldwide, especially within human muscle research. Regarding the morphological investigations I have in recent years started using immunohistochemical methods. Several of the used antibodies are based on our own production from clones from ATCC. As a result, immunohistological methods are now a substantial part of my field of interest.

The biochemical analyses comprise spectrophotometric, fluorometric, radioactive and HPCl techniques for determination of metabolite concentrations and enzyme activities. At present one of my major fields of interest is the development of "model animals" with varying standardised physiological conditions and application of these in investigations to elucidate the relation between these and the individual quality parametres. Lately I have worked on the possibility to the apply micro dialysis technique to describe extracellular conditions both in vivo and after slaughter. Likewise I am interested in and involved in work on the possiblities of the NMR-method, primarily the P-NMR. In order to get as detailed a knowledge as possible I perform continuous studies on the single muscle fibres and their response to strain in the live animal as well as after slaughter