Effects of dietary supplementation with histidine and β-alanine on blood plasma metabolome of broiler chickens at different ages

Abstract

Histidine is an essential amino acid for broiler chickens and a precursor for the dipeptides carnosine and anserine, but little information is available about its metabolism in modern, fast-growing broilers. We used untargeted metabolomics to investigate the metabolic changes caused by the use of different standardized ileal digestible His:Lys ratios in broiler diets with and without β-alanine supplementation. A total of 2204 broilers were randomly divided into 96 pens of 23 birds each. The pens were divided into 16 blocks, each containing one pen for all six feeding groups (total of 16 pens per group). These feeding groups were fed three different His:Lys ratios (0.44, 0.54, and 0.64, respectively) without and with a combination of 0.5% β-alanine supplementation. Five randomly selected chickens of one single randomly selected pen per feeding group were slaughtered on day 35 or 54, blood was collected from the neck vessel, and plasma was used for untargeted metabolomic analysis. Here we show that up to 56.0% of all metabolites analyzed were altered by age, whereas only 1.8% of metabolites were affected by the His:Lys ratio in the diet, and 1.5% by β-alanine supplementation. Two-factor analysis and metabolic pathway analysis showed no interaction between the His:Lys ratio and β-alanine supplementation. The effect of the His:Lys ratio in the diet was limited to histidine metabolism with a greater change in formiminoglutamate concentration. Supplementation of β-alanine showed changes in metabolites of several metabolic pathways; increased concentrations of 3-aminoisobutyrate showed the only direct relationship to β-alanine metabolism. The supplementation of β-alanine indicated few effects on histidine metabolism. These results suggest that the supplements used had limited effects or interactions on both His and β-alanine metabolism. In contrast, the birds’ age has the strongest influence on the metabolome.

Glutamatergic system regulates feather pecking behaviors in laying hens: the gut-brain axis mechanism

“…Our results indicated that the Arginine level in the peripheral plasma was signi cantly increased; the Histidine level also increased but not signi cantly (P = 0.076), which was probably due to the enhanced permeability of the BBB (blood brain barrier) to Histidine under environmental stress [34]. Arginine and histidine supplementation increased their blood plasma concentrations [35,36]. Thus, in this study, the increased levels of plasma arginine and histidine can be mainly attributed to the enhancement of their biosynthesis in the gut bacteria, and the reduction of arginine metabolism.…”

Temporal stability and community assembly mechanisms in healthy broiler cecum

“…Histidine has an effect on the metabolites of various metabolic pathways. L-arginine has a vital role in reducing fat deposition by moderating lipid metabolism ( Fouad et al, 2013 ; Lackner et al, 2022 ). Taurine affects meat quality by enhancing the anti-oxidative capacity and lipid metabolism, particularly under heat stress ( Lu et al, 2019 ; Xu et al, 2019 ; Han et al, 2020 ).…”

Untargeted metabolomics analysis on kidney tissues from mice reveals potential hypoxia biomarkers

“…Distance was measured using Euclidean Correlations and the Ward clustering algorithm. For analyzing the interaction of gender with hypoxic state, we used the multivariate analysis feature from MetaboAnalyst 5.0 34 , the study design of 'two-factor independent samples' was set, and two-way ANOVA analysis was performed to identify differences and interactions between gender and condition (hypoxic vs. normoxic).…”