Heritability and genetic correlations of plasma metabolites of pigs with production, resilience and carcass traits under natural polymicrobial disease challenge

Abstract

Metabolites in plasma of healthy nursery pigs were quantified using nuclear magnetic resonance. Heritabilities of metabolite concentration were estimated along with their phenotypic and genetic correlations with performance, resilience, and carcass traits in growing pigs exposed to a natural polymicrobial disease challenge. Variance components were estimated by GBLUP. Heritability estimates were low to moderate (0.11 ± 0.08 to 0.19 ± 0.08) for 14 metabolites, moderate to high (0.22 ± 0.09 to 0.39 ± 0.08) for 17 metabolites, and highest for l-glutamic acid (0.41 ± 0.09) and hypoxanthine (0.42 ± 0.08). Phenotypic correlation estimates of plasma metabolites with performance and carcass traits were generally very low. Significant genetic correlation estimates with performance and carcass traits were found for several measures of growth and feed intake. Interestingly the plasma concentration of oxoglutarate was genetically negatively correlated with treatments received across the challenge nursery and finisher (− 0.49 ± 0.28; P < 0.05) and creatinine was positively correlated with mortality in the challenge nursery (0.85 ± 0.76; P < 0.05). These results suggest that some plasma metabolite phenotypes collected from healthy nursery pigs are moderately heritable and genetic correlations with measures of performance and resilience after disease challenge suggest they may be potential genetic indicators of disease resilience.

Relationship between indirect genetic effects for growth, environmental enrichment, coping style and sex with the serum metabolome profile of pigs

“…Furthermore, pathway analysis showed that the top ranked pathway associated with the response to regrouping was glycine, serine and threonine metabolism. This pathway has been reported to be genetically correlated with the average daily gain in pigs 21 . The amino acid L-glycine decreased in positive IGE animals after regrouping.…”

GWAS and genetic and phenotypic correlations of plasma metabolites with complete blood count traits in healthy young pigs reveal implications for pig immune response

“…In addition, Bai et al (2020) reported estimates of heritability of CBC traits and the phenotypic and genetic correlations of CBC traits with growth rate and veterinary treatment rate. Estimates of the heritability of 44 metabolites on young healthy pigs along with estimates of the phenotypic and genetic parameters of plasma metabolite concentration with subsequent performance, disease resilience, and carcass traits under the same natural disease challenge described by Bai et al (2020) was reported by Dervishi et al (2021) .…”

Breeding for disease resilience: opportunities to manage polymicrobial challenge and improve commercial performance in the pig industry

“…Importantly, the NDCM allowed the collection of different measures of resilience including growth and treatment rates, and feed and water intake. In addition, metabolites in plasma and a range of health and immune traits, including health condition scores (HScore), complete blood count (CBC) and natural antibody level (NAb) were also collected from the NDCM for multiple genetic studies of disease resilience (Bai et al 2020 ; Chen et al 2020 ; Cheng et al 2020 ; Dervishi et al 2021 ). Most traits were found to be moderately heritable except for HScore which was not significantly different from zero (Putz et al 2019 ; Bai et al 2020 ; Chen et al 2020 ; Cheng et al 2020 ; Dervishi et al 2021 ).…”

“…In addition, metabolites in plasma and a range of health and immune traits, including health condition scores (HScore), complete blood count (CBC) and natural antibody level (NAb) were also collected from the NDCM for multiple genetic studies of disease resilience (Bai et al 2020 ; Chen et al 2020 ; Cheng et al 2020 ; Dervishi et al 2021 ). Most traits were found to be moderately heritable except for HScore which was not significantly different from zero (Putz et al 2019 ; Bai et al 2020 ; Chen et al 2020 ; Cheng et al 2020 ; Dervishi et al 2021 ). The potential utility of these traits was assessed according to their genetic correlations with several economically important production traits and measures of resilience, such as average daily gain, grow-to-finish growth rate, average daily feed intake, feed conversion ratio, residual feed intake, and carcass traits.…”

“…Some of the phenotypes show promise as indicator traits for improving reisilience. For example, higher plasma concentration of oxoglutarate but lower concentration of creatinine in healthy pigs were found to be genetically correlated with lower treatment incidence and mortality in response to disease challenge, respectively, which may lead to improved disease resilience (Dervishi et al 2021 ). Higher NAb titers for immunoglobin G binding peptidoglycan (PDG-G) in the quarantine stage was found to be associated with the higher individual treatment incidence, indicating that higher PDG-G may lead to lower disease resilience (Chen et al 2020 ).…”