Contributors -- Preface -- 1 Number and Size of Muscle Fibres in Relation to Meat Production -- 2 Fibre Type Identification and Functional Characterization in Adult Livestock Animals -- 3 Manipulation of Muscle Fibre Number During Prenatal Development -- 4 The Effect of Growth and Exercise on Muscle Characteristics in Relation to Meat Quality -- 5 Nutrition, Hormone Receptor Expression and Gene Interactions: Implications for Development and Disease -- 6 The Impact of Minerals and Micronutrients on Growth Control -- 7 Na+,K+-ATPase in Skeletal Muscle: Significance of Exercise and Thyroid Hormones for Development and Performance -- 8 Local and Systemic Regulation of Muscle Growth -- 9 Proteolytic Systems and the Regulation of Muscle Remodelling and Breakdown -- 10 The Muscle Regulatory Factors Gene Family in Relation to Meat Production -- 11 The Muscle Transcriptome -- 12 Genome Analysis of QTL for Muscle Tissue Development and Meat Quality -- 13 Functional Genomics and Proteomics in Relation to Muscle Tissue -- 14 Role of Myostatin in Muscle Growth -- 15 The Callipyge Mutation for Sheep Muscular Hypertrophy - Genetics, Physiology and Meat Quality -- 16 Genetic Control of Intramuscular Fat Accretion -- 17 Post-mortem Muscle Proteolysis and Meat Tenderness -- 18 Water-holding Capacity of Meat -- Perspectives -- Index.