“…In pigs, another action of ractopamine on fat metabolism is the promotion of lower fat accretion by reducing lipogenesis (Bergen, 2001), which could be explained by the reduction of the sensitivity on adipose tissue to insulin, as it happens in pigs under βAA stimulation, and an evidence of lipogenesis inhibition (Mills et al, 2002). Furthermore, according to recent works focusing on lipogenic gene expression in the adipose tissue of finishing pigs, ractopamine can reduce the RNA transcription of genes related to lipid synthesis, such as sterol regulatory binding protein-1 (SREBP-1), which is a transcriptional factor that drive genes involved in the synthesis of fatty acids (Horton et al, 2003) and fatty acid synthase (Reiter et al, 2007;Halsey et al, 2011), a key enzyme involved in the synthesis of fatty acids (Ferreira et al, 2013). Although no difference was found in the weight gain between control and treatment groups during the experimental period (average of 170 g) ( Table 3), considering that ractopamine may have more efficacy on blocking lipogenesis instead of stimulating lipolysis (Mills et al, 2003), the animals that received ractopamine may have had a decrease of lipogenesis rate, especially at 8 mg kg −1 of ractopamine.…”