The Impact of Maternal and Piglet Low Protein Diet and Their Interaction on the Porcine Liver Transcriptome around the Time of Weaning

Abstract

Maternal diet during early gestation affects offspring phenotype, but it is unclear whether maternal diet during late gestation influences piglet metabolism. We evaluated the impact of two dietary protein levels in sow late gestation diet and piglet nursery diet on piglet metabolism. Diets met or exceeded the crude protein and amino acid requirements. Sows received either 12% (Lower, L) or 17% (Higher, H) crude protein (CP) during the last five weeks of gestation, and piglets received 16.5% (L) or 21% (H) CP from weaning at age 3.5 weeks. This resulted in a 2 × 2 factorial design with four sow/piglet diet treatment groups: HH and LL (match), HL and LH (mismatch). Piglet hepatic tissues were sampled and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were determined by RNA sequencing. At age 4.5 weeks, 25 genes were downregulated and 22 genes were upregulated in the mismatch compared to match groups. Several genes involved in catabolic pathways were upregulated in the mismatch compared to match groups, as were genes involved in lipid metabolism and inflammation. The results show a distinct interaction effect between maternal and nursery diets, implying that sow late gestation diet could be used to optimize piglet metabolism.

Alterations in Essential Fatty Acids, Immunoglobulins (IgA, IgG, and IgM), and Enteric Methane Emission in Primiparous Sows Fed Hemp Seed Oil and Their Offspring Response

“…The mean value of the rate of diarrhoea was 6.2% lower in the PHO group. Previous findings of Hăbeanu et al [ 8 ] have shown lowering (better) faecal consistency scores by limiting protein in the nursery diet which is consistent with more recent results from Kroeskea et al [ 63 , 64 ]. Oil derived from vegetable feedstuffs such as hemp seed, linseed, or algae is generally high in n-3 PUFA but weak in EPA and DHA, which have a higher bioactivity.…”

Recent developments and future directions in meta-analysis of differential gene expression in livestock RNA-Seq

“…For longer transcripts with many isoforms or non-poly(A) transcripts, traditional RNA-Seq may be more appropriate. To date, QuantSeq has been deployed in transcriptomic studies of multiple livestock species, including cattle ( Pascottini et al, 2021 ; Beak and Baik, 2022 ; Busato et al, 2022 ; Pedroza et al, 2022 ), sheep ( Kubik et al, 2018 ), chicken ( Ibrahim et al, 2021 ) and pigs ( Dong et al, 2018 ; Kroeske et al, 2021 ; Schroyen et al, 2021 ; Kramer et al, 2022 ).…”

Effects of different levels of dietary crude protein on the physiological response, reproductive performance, blood profiles, milk composition and odor emission in gestating sows

“…National Research Council (NRC) [3] recommends 12.9% CP in gestation diets for gilts (average 125 kg of body weight [BW]), but the CP requirement of NRC in 2012 [4] decreased by 2% to 4% compared to that of NRC in 1998 [3]. Many recent reports have been concerned about the decrease in dietary CP levels in the swine diet [5][6][7]. Moreover, as experimental results begin to accumulate, the application of low-protein diets in swine nutrition could be vigorously implemented in pig production to solve the problem of protein feed resource shortages and to alleviate environmental issues [8].…”