Fig. 1

A dendrogram of relationships between the various fat depots based on the expression profiles of 10,000 genes selected at random. The treatment labels are breed (Ang = Angus, Her = Hereford, Wag = Wagyu x Angus), diet (past = pasture, supp = supplement), Kill number (2 or 5) and finally tissue (LD = longissimus dorsi muscle, IMF = intramuscular fat, Inter Mus – intermuscular fat, Omental = omental fat, Kidney = kidney fat, SC rump = subcutaneous rump fat). The first major split shows that the LD muscle is discriminated from all fat depots, reflecting muscle-specific patterns of gene expression. All fat depots are clearly resolved i.e. the three breeds form fat depot specific clusters in all cases which shows the various depots all possess diagnostic genome-wide expression signatures. IMF was awarded a unique branch within the fat tree, but this is presumably influenced by muscle derived gene expression arising from small amounts of LD muscle contamination