As beef producers continue to improve efficiency, understanding the process of growth and development is crucial as cellular skeletal muscle characteristics, such as tenderness, can ultimately have an impact on consumer acceptance of meat products.
In order for skeletal muscle mass to increase, there must also be an increase in the number of nuclei in the muscle fiber, which are provided from satellite cells. The proliferation and fusion of muscle satellite cells have been shown to be a rate limiting step to postnatal skeletal muscle growth.