No abstract

Background: Air temperature and humidity are two important climatic elements that affect animal welfare and health. The prevailing hot and humid or dry climate is one of the major constraints for optimum poultry production especially in the tropics and subtropical regions. Many studies have suggested that exposure hot-humid or dry climate is associated with a high risk of metabolic imbalance; however, the underlying metabolic route caused by low or high RH climate is not yet well understood. Therefore, we used a comprehensive UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS-based metabolic profiling of fecal samples to explore the effects of hot-humid and dry on metabolic pathway in broilers.Results: Significant changes in the levels of 36 metabolites were detected. Evidence of changes in gluconeogenesis associated to pyruvate metabolism, galactose metabolism and ABC transporter were observed. In addition, hot-humid and dry stress also affected protein translation process caused by aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, which may be associated with protein synthesis and hormone secretion disorders. Furthermore, we observed significant changes in primary bile acid biosynthesis and taurine and hypotaurine metabolism, which indicated that fat synthesis was affected. We also observed significant changes in arginine and proline metabolism and histidine metabolism, which were associated with skin vasodilation and blood flow.Conclusions: These results provide biochemical insights into metabolism route of hot-humid or dry climate.