The effect of supplementing grass silage with fishmeal on growth, muscle composition and the rate of muscle protein synthesis was investigated in young Friesian steers with and without oestradiol implants. The effect of the P-adrenergic agonist cimaterol was simultaneously investigated in animals fed on silage alone. Treatments lasted for 9 or 10 weeks. Fishmeal supplementation significantly increased animal growth rates (P < 0.001) and the weights of three dissected muscles (P < 0.001) compared with the silage-fed controls. These effects were further enhanced in animals also implanted with oestradiol. Muscle weights expressed as a proportion of body-weight were increased by fishmeal, suggesting that protein deposition had been enhanced. No further increase in the proportional muscle weights was obtained with oestradiol. Muscle dry matter content tended to be increased in both implanted and nonimplanted animals receiving fishmeal compared with controls, but the proportions of protein, fat and ash were relatively constant. The intramuscular lipid composition was slightly altered by fishmeal. Muscle protein fractional synthetic rates (FSR), measured by continuous infusion of [3H]tyrosine, were increased by fishmeal in all three muscles of both implanted and non-implanted animals. There were no differences, however, due to oestradiol, over non-implanted fishmeal animals. This suggests that oestradiol may increase muscle accretion by reducing protein degradation rate. Cimaterol significantly increased longissimus dorsi (P < 0.05) and vastus lateralis (P < 0.01) muscle weights but had no effect on semitendinosus muscle weight or live-weight gain. The proportion of protein was increased (P < 0.001) and the fat content reduced (P < 0.05) in all three muscles but intramuscular lipid composition was not markedly affected. Whilst methylhistidine : creatinine excretion was reduced by cimaterol, FSR were increased in the 1. dorsi and v. lateralis muscles suggesting P-agonists have effects on both protein synthesis and protein degradation.

Three body amino acid pools (plasma free, plasma bound and small intestinal tissue) were evaluated as precursors to allow measurement using the isotope dilution technique of endogenous excretion at the terminal ileum of animals. Eighteen 150-g bodyweight rats were given either a protein-free, an enzyme-hydrolysed casein based or a synthetic amino acid based diet, and digesta were collected from the terminal ileum. The animals had been subjected to a constant 8-day infusion of tritiated leucine via subcutaneously implanted osmotic mini pumps. Specific activities (dpm nM-' leucine) of the ileal digesta and the plasma free, plasma bound and small intestinal tissue pools were determined and the specific activity for the ileal digesta was expressed as a proportion of the respective precursor pool value to give dilution factors for each dietary treatment. For the protein-free diet, where the ileal nitrogenous flow is endogenous by definition, the dilution factor for an appropriate precursor pool would be unity.For the hydrolysed casein and synthetic amino acid diets, in which the peptides and amino acids are expected to be virtually completely absorbed anterior to the ileum, high dilution factors (close to unity) would be expected. The mean dilution factors based on the plasma free amino acid pool were untenably low (0.2 to 0.3). For the plasma bound amino acid pool mean dilution factors of 1.3 were found for animals given the protein-free and synthetic amino acid diets, while a lower value (0.7) was obtained for the hydrolysed casein treatment. Untenably high factors (1.5) were found with the small intestinal tissue for the protein-free and synthetic amino acid treatments, while the corresponding value for the hydrolysed caseinfed rats was unity. The dilution factor data within treatments were highly variable, and none of the pools examined gave consistently reliable results and could thus be accepted as a valid precursor pool for the endogenous proteins.

HEU infants aged 6-24 months had worse nutritional status compared to HUU infants. Low birthweight was the main predictor of undernutrition in this population. Optimisation of infant nutritional status should focus on improving birthweight. In addition, specific interventions should target HEU infants aiming to eliminate growth disparity between HEU and HUU infants.

The effect of fish-meal supplementation or cimaterol administration on the composition, cellularity and metabolism of subcutaneous and perirenal adipose tissue was examined in young Friesian steers given grass silage. Animals (approx. 117 kg live weight) received either silage alone (group C; no. = 6) or supplemented with fish meal (150 g/kg silage dry matter; group FM; no. = 6) or cimaterol (0·06 mg/kg body weight per day) administered via osmotic minipumps (group CIM; no. = 6) for a period of 6 weeks. Samples of perirenal and subcutaneous adipose tissue obtained at slaughter were used for determination of tissue composition andin vitrorates of lipogenesis, lipolysis and substrate oxidation. FM animals showed significantly greater live-weight gains (0·61 kg/day) compared with C (0·21 kg/day,P&lt; 0·001) while CIM animals had significantly lower rates of gain (0·04 kg/day,P&lt; 0·05). This was considered to be related to increased heat loss from the β-agonist-treated animals as a result of very cold weather encountered during the experimental period. CIM administration reduced adipocyte size suggesting an increased number of cells per g tissue. Both lipolytic and lipogenic rates were reduced by cimaterol and there was some evidence that the response to insulin was diminished, at least with respect to substrate oxidation. FM increased lipogenesis from acetate and acetate oxidation rates in subcutaneous adipose tissue with similar trends in perirenal tissue. The results indicate that both fish-meal supplementation and cimaterol administration caused substantial changes in adipose tissue metabolism as determined usingin vitroprocedures, even though the magnitude and direction of the changes were not in strict accord with estimates of net fat accretion from relatedin vivostudies.