Relationship between the concentration of myoglobin and parvalbumin in various types of muscle tissues from chickens.

The concentration of parvalbumin was determined in various types of chicken muscle by immunological analysis and was compared with that of myoglobin. Parvalbumin was present specifically in skeletal muscle and absent in cardiac and gizzard muscle; exceptionally, neither parvalbumin nor myoglobin was detected in white breast muscle. The wing and leg red muscles, which had larger amounts of myoglobin, contained smaller quantities of parvalbumin. In these muscles, the concentration of parvalbumin was inversely related to that of myoglobin (correlation coefficient = -0.69). Both myoglobin and parvalbumin were observed in the legs of 18-d-old embryos; the parvalbumin content exceeded that of myoglobin until the birds were 4 to 6 weeks old, but the relationship was reversed thereafter. Myoglobin in gizzard muscle was present in 18-d-old embryos and increased markedly at hatching; it was already present in cardiac muscle at an early embryonic stage, increasing gradually until 14 weeks after hatching.