Is the synthesis of rumen bacterial protein limited by the availability of pre-formed amino acids and/or peptides?

Effects of L-Leu-L-Leu peptide on growth, proliferation, and apoptosis in broiler intestinal epithelial cells

Small peptides are nutrients and bioactive molecules that have dual regulatory effects on nutrition and physiology. They are of great significance for maintaining the intestinal health and production performance of broilers. We here cultured the primary small intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) of chicken in a medium containing L-Leu (Leu) and L-Leu-L-Leu (Leu-Leu) for 24 h. The untreated cells were considered as the control group. The growth, proliferation, and apoptosis of IEC were examined. By combining RNA-seq and label-free sequencing technology, candidate genes, proteins, and pathways related to the growth, proliferation, and apoptosis of IEC were screened. Immunofluorescence detection revealed that the purity of the isolated primary IEC was >90%. The Leu-Leu group significantly promoted IEC growth and proliferation and significantly inhibited IEC apoptosis, and the effect was better than those of the Leu and control groups. Using transcriptome sequencing, four candidate genes, CCL20, IL8L1, IL8, and IL6, were screened in the Leu group, and one candidate gene, IL8, was screened in the Leu-Leu group. Two candidate genes, IL6 and RGN, were screened in the Leu-Leu group compared with the Leu group. Nonquantitative proteomic marker sequencing results revealed that through the screening of candidate proteins and pathways, found one growth-related candidate protein PGM3 and three proliferation-related candidate proteins RPS17, RPS11, and RPL23, and two apoptosis-related candidate proteins GPX4 and PDPK1 were found in the Leu-Leu group compared with Leu group. In short, Leu-Leu could promote IEC growth and proliferation and inhibit IEC apoptosis. On combining transcriptome and proteome sequencing technologies, multiple immune- and energy-related regulatory signal pathways were found to be related to IEC growth, proliferation, and apoptosis. Three candidate genes of IL8, IL6, and RGN were identified, and six candidate proteins of PGM3, RPS17, RPS11, RPL23, GPX4, and PDPK1 were involved in IEC growth, proliferation, and apoptosis. The results provide valuable data for preliminarily elucidating small peptide-mediated IEC regulation pathways, improving the small peptide nutrition theoretical system, and establishing small peptide nutrition regulation technology.

Microbial and metabolomic insights into the bovine lipometabolic responses of rumen and mammary gland to zymolytic small peptide supplementation

Small peptides provide the easily utilized nitrogen for rumen microbial and promote acetate generation for milk fat synthesis. However, the impacts of peptide supplements on lipometabolic processes were still unclear. Therefore, a total of 800 multiparous dairy herds (with an average live weight of 667.6 ± 39.4 kg, an average lactation of 89.3 ± 18.8 days, and an average calving parity of 2.76 ± 0.47) were randomly allocated to the control (CON) and the small peptide (SP) supplement (100 g/day for each cow) treatments, respectively. A 35-day-long feeding procedure that includes a 7-day-long pretreatment test and a 28-day-long treatment test was followed for all cows. Dry matter intake (DMI) was recorded every day and calculated by the deviation between the supply and residue, while the daily milk production was automatically recorded through the rotary milking facilities. Milk samples were collected from each replicate on the last day, followed by the milk quality and milk lipid composition measurement. Rumen fluid samples were collected on the last day through esophageal tubing 3 h after morning feeding for the determination of the underlying mechanism of the small peptide on lipid metabolism through the measurement of rumen lipometabolic-related metabolites and rumen bacterial communities. Results indicated that dry matter intake showed an increasing trend, while milk production and the milk fat content remarkably increased after SP supplement (P < 0.05). Further detailed detection showed the mainly increased milk composition focused on monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) and polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA). Acetate-producing microbes, such as Acetitomaculum, Bifidobacterium, Succiniclasticum, and Succinivibrio, and butyrate-producing microbes, such as Shuttleworthia and Saccharofermentans, significantly proliferated, which causatively brought the increased ruminal content of acetate, isobutyrate, and butyrate after SP supplement (P < 0.05) compared with CON. Lipometabolic metabolites such as phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylinositol (PI), phosphatidylserine (PS), triacylglycerol (TG), and Acetyl-CoA also significantly increased after SP supplement. In summary, SP supplements help to increase milk fat content through the proliferation of rumen bacterial communities, which provided more acetate and butyrate for milk fat synthesis combined with the promotion of ruminal lipometabolism.

Regulation of Probiotics on Metabolism of Dietary Protein in Intestine

Proteins are indispensable components of living organisms, which are derived mainly from diet through metabolism. Dietary proteins are degraded by endogenous digestive enzymes to di- or tripeptides and free amino acids (AAs) in the small intestine lumen and then absorbed into blood and lymph through intestinal epithelial cells via diverse transporters. Microorganisms are involved not only in the proteins' catabolism, but also the AAs, especially essential AAs, anabolism. Probiotics regulate these processes by providing exogenous proteases and AAs and peptide transporters, and reducing hazardous substances in the food and feed. But the core mechanism is modulating of the composition of intestinal microorganisms through their colonization and exclusion of pathogens. The other effects of probiotics are associated with normal intestinal morphology, which implies that the enterocytes secrete more enzymes to decompose dietary proteins and absorb more nutrients.

Effect of dietary concentrate to forage ratios on ruminal bacterial and anaerobic fungal populations of cashmere goats

The rumen contains a highly complex microbial ecosystem that plays an important role in converting solar energy in plants into nutrients for ruminants and generates animal food products, such as meat and milk for humans. Therefore, understanding the effect of the dietary concentrate to forage (C:F) ratio on ruminal microbiota is of great significance for the growth and development of ruminants. In this study, changes in the ruminal bacterial and anaerobic fungal populations of Shaanbei white-cashmere (SWC) goats that were reared under different dietary C:F ratios were evaluated by high-throughput sequencing analysis. It was found that dietary C:F ratio has a significant impact on the composition of the ruminal bacteria in SWC goats. The levels of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria were significantly increased (P < 0.05), whereas the level of Bacteroidetes was significantly decreased when the proportion of dietary concentrate was increased (P < 0.05); as the proportion of dietary concentrate increased, Prevotella, Selenomonas, and Treponema were significantly increased (P < 0.05), whereas Oscillospira and Succiniclasticum were significantly reduced (P < 0.05). Furthermore, different dietary C:F ratios significantly affected the composition of anaerobic fungi in SWC goats. As the proportion of dietary concentrate increased, Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Zygomycota were significantly increased (P < 0.05), while Neocallimastigomycota was significantly reduced (P < 0.05); the levels of Alternaria, Aspergillus, Neocallimastix, Orpinomyces, Piromyces, and Stachybotrys were significantly increased, while those of Candida, Penicillium, and Trichosporon were significantly decreased when the proportion of dietary concentrate increased (P < 0.05). These findings will help us to better understand the changes in ruminal bacterial and anaerobic fungal populations of SWC goats under different dietary C:F ratios, which could provide a theoretical basis for microecological regulation of SWC goats.

The Importance of Isotopic Turnover for Understanding Key Aspects of Animal Ecology and Nutrition

Stable isotope-based methods have proved to be immensely valuable for ecological studies ranging in focus from animal movements to species interactions and community structure. Nevertheless, the use of these methods is dependent on assumptions about the incorporation and turnover of isotopes within animal tissues, which are oftentimes not explicitly acknowledged and vetted. Thus, the purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the estimation of stable isotope turnover rates in animals, and to highlight the importance of these estimates for ecological studies in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems that may use a wide range of stable isotopes. Specifically, we discuss 1) the factors that contribute to variation in turnover among individuals and across species, which influences the use of stable isotopes for diet reconstructions, 2) the differences in turnover among tissues that underlie so-called ‘isotopic clocks’, which are used to estimate the timing of dietary shifts, and 3) the use of turnover rates to estimate nutritional requirements and reconstruct histories of nutritional stress from tissue isotope signatures. As we discuss these topics, we highlight recent works that have effectively used estimates of turnover to design and execute informative ecological studies. Our concluding remarks suggest several steps that will improve our understanding of isotopic turnover and support its integration into a wider range of ecological studies.

Assessment of amino acid requirements for optimum fermentation of xylan by mixed micro-organisms from the sheep rumen

A deletion approach was undertaken to identify which amino acids (AA) most limited the growth of mixed ruminal microorganisms on xylan. Ruminal fluid was withdrawn from sheep receiving a mixed grass hay/concentrate diet and incubated for 24 h with oat spelts xylan in the presence or absence of a mixture of 20 AA or the same mixture with a single AA deleted. Gas and volatile fatty acid production were increased by the AA mixture in comparison with incubations in which ammonia was the only added nitrogen (N) source, and the deletion of each of the aromatic AA, tyrosine, phenylalanine and tryptophan, as well as leucine and methionine, led to decreases (P< 0·05) in fermentation rate. The addition of aromatic AA as a mixture to ammonia-only fermentations increased (P< 0·05) the fermentation rate but failed to replicate the benefits of the complete mixture of AA. Although the addition of all 20 AA increased (P< 0·05) the microbial yield by up to 0·56, no single AA deletion had a significant (P> 0·05) influence on microbial yield, and the aromatic AA mixture also did not increase the microbial yield on xylan over the yield with ammonia as sole N source. It was concluded that aromatic AA may be first-limiting for xylan fermentation, but they cannot replace the benefits of a complete mixture of 20 AA in stimulating xylan fermentation by ruminal micro-organisms.

Effect of total mixed ration composition on fermentation and efficiency of ruminal microbial crude protein synthesis in vitro

The goal of this study was to identify dietary factors that affect fermentation and efficiency of microbial crude protein (CP(M)) synthesis in the rumen in vitro. We used 16 total mixed, dairy cow rations with known digestibilities that varied in ingredient composition and nutrient content. Each ration was incubated in a Rusitec (n = 3) for 15 d, and fermentation of different fractions was assessed. Observed extents of fermentation in 24 h were 35 to 47% for organic matter, 25 to 60% for crude protein, 3 to 28% for neutral detergent fiber, and 31 to 45% for gross energy. Organic matter fermentation depended on the content of crude protein and neutral detergent fiber in the ration. We studied net synthesis of CP(M) using an 15N dilution technique and found that 7 d of continuous 15N application are needed to achieve an 15N enrichment plateau in the N of isolated microbes in this type of study. The efficiency of CP(M) synthesis was 141 to 286 g/kg of fermented organic matter or 4.9 to 11.1 g/MJ of metabolizable energy, and these ranges agree with those found in the literature. Multiple regressions to predict the efficiency of CP(M) synthesis by diet data showed that crude protein was the only dietary chemical fraction that had a significant effect. Fat content and the inclusion rate of corn silage in the ration also tended to improve efficiency. We suggest that microbial need for preformed amino acids may explain the crude protein effect. A large part of the variation in efficiency of microbial activity still remains unexplained.

Nitrogen metabolism in the rumen

Protein metabolism in the rumen is the result of metabolic activity of ruminal microorganisms. The structure of the protein is a key factor in determining its susceptibility to microbial proteases and, thus, its degradability. Ruminal protein degradation is affected by pH and the predominant species of microbial population. Ruminal proteolytic activity decreases as pH decreases with high-forage dairy cattle-type rations, but not in high-concentrate beef-type rations. Accumulation of amino acid (AA) N after feeding suggests that AA uptake by rumen microorganisms could be the limiting factor of protein degradation in the rumen. In addition, there are several AA, such as Phe, Leu, and Ile, that are synthesized by rumen microorganisms with greater difficulty than other AA. The most common assessment of efficiency of microbial protein synthesis (EMPS) is determination of grams of microbial N per unit of rumen available energy, typically expressed as true organic matter or carbohydrates fermented. However, EMPS is unable to estimate the efficiency at which bacteria capture available N in the rumen. An alternative and complementary measure of microbial protein synthesis is the efficiency of N use (ENU). In contrast to EMPS, ENU is a good measurement for describing efficiency of N capture by ruminal microbes. Using EMPS and ENU, it was concluded that optimum bacterial growth in the rumen occurs when EMPS is 29 g of bacterial N/kg of fermented organic matter, and ENU is 69%, implying that bacteria would require about 1.31 x rumen-available N per unit of bacterial N. Because the distribution of N within bacterial cells changes with rate of fermentation, AA N, rather than total bacterial N should be used to express microbial protein synthesis.