The impact of dietary soybean oil, lard and fish oil on physiological responses in middle age is little studied. In this study, we investigated the changes of oxidative stress, inflammatory cytokines, telomere length, and age-related gene expression in the liver of middle-aged rats in response to the above three fat diets. Male Sprague Dawley rats (12 months old) were fed AIN-93M diets for 3 months, in which soybean oil was equivalently replaced by lard or fish oil. As compared to the lard diet, intake of fish oil diet significantly decreased body weight gain, white blood cell count, and levels of hepatic triacylglycerol, total cholesterol, fat accumulation, low-density lipoprotein, oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokines (P < 0.05), but increased telomere length (P < 0.05). On the other hand, lard diet and soybean oil diet showed great similarity in the above variables. PCR array analysis further indicated that fish oil diet significantly down-regulated gene expression related to inflammatory response, apoptosis, DNA binding, proteostasis and telomere attrition. Differentially expressed genes were enriched in the complement and coagulation cascades pathways. Such physiological and molecular responses could be due to different fatty acid composition in fish oil, lard and soybean oil.

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The independent and highly heterozygous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been shown suitable for meat traceability. The microRNAs (miRNAs) that were differently expressed among regions could be used for meat origin traceability. In the present study, ten SNPs from 148 Chinese beef cattle were screened by HRM. The results showed that these SNPs were all suitable for beef traceability with the probability error rate of .308‰. These cattle could not be clustered into different regions based on the SNP genotyping, which indicated that the SNPs assay was suitable for individual traceability. High throughput sequencing revealed that 16 miRNAs were up‐regulated expression and 18 miRNAs were down‐regulated expression in JL group (eastern part) compared to XJ group (western part). RT‐PCR confirmed that bta‐miR‐2284ab and bta‐miR‐486 were differently expressed in Jilin and Xinjiang samples. Thus, the two miRNAs could be used as biomarkers for origin traceability. Practical applications To solve meat safety problems, meat traceability is extremely important. SNPs‐based technology can trace animal individuals and miRNAs‐based technology can do origin traceability. Once suitable primers could be designed for a sufficient number of SNP loci, these primers could be loaded on an array, and then traceability could be realized by HRM. We identified the miRNAs that were differently expressed among regions and beef origin traceability could be realized by analyzing them using RT‐PCR. All the detection methods are rapidly and cost‐effectively. A combination of SNPs‐ and miRNAs‐based technologies can implement traceability management of beef cattle.