The primary focus of my research is meat quality in both land animals and fish. We known that meat quality is strongly influenced by protein composition and protein degradation events in the muscles, and I work with different tools and techniques to investigating these processes in the muscle. This includes activity assays for different proteases (calpain system, cathepsins), analyses of protein degradation (Western blotting, immunohistochemistry), muscle histology, and proteome analyses.
I received a Masters Degree in Food Science (1998) and a Ph.D. in Biotechnology (2003) from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB). During my Ph.D. studies I spent 3 years working at the USDA Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, and this resulted in a doctoral thesis entitled: “Calpain activity in postmortem muscle and its involvement in meat tenderization”.
