Animals (Basel)
December 2024
Crude protein (CP) reduction and amino acid (AAs) supplementation is an interesting cost-reducing strategy for environmental compliance. The objective of this work is to study productive performances of heavy Duroc X (Landrace X Large white) male and female pigs during the finishing stage under a 2% CP reduction with crystalline AA supplementation. A total of 60 entire male and 60 female pigs (means ± standard deviations: 109 ± 4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPig production is one of the most important providers of high-quality proteins and amino acids (AAs) to human nutrition. In this sector, feeding has an important economic and environmental impact. A strategy to reduce production costs and negative sustainability effects is reducing dietary crude protein (CP) contents with or without AA supplementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(CV) is a microalga with considerable nutritional value, containing high levels of protein, carotenoids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, which have the potential to positively influence the productive performance and egg quality of laying hens. CV emerges as a more sustainable ingredient than soybean meal (SBM) as it can be produced locally and with fewer inputs. In this regard, a study was conducted with 48 H&N Brown Nick strain laying hens, at 19 weeks of age, over a period of 16 weeks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimals (Basel)
December 2023
The diet offered to animals has a great influence on the composition of tissues and, consequently, the quality. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of Amazonian ecosystems, in the dry and rainy periods of the year, on the composition of cholesterol, tocopherols, β-carotene and the fatty acid profile of the livers of water buffaloes () reared in the Eastern Amazon, in an extensive or intensive system. Total lipid content was influenced by the location and time of year ( < 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Proteomics
October 2023
Laminaria digitata, a brown seaweed with prebiotic properties, can potentially enhance the resilience of weaned piglets to nutritional distress. However, their cell wall polysaccharides elude digestion by monogastric animals' endogenous enzymes. In vitro studies suggest alginate lyase's ability to degrade such polysaccharides.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeasonal weight loss (SWL), is a major limitation to animal production. In the Canary Islands, there are two dairy goat breeds with different levels of tolerance to SWL: Majorera (tolerant) and Palmera (susceptible). Our team has studied the response of these breeds to SWL using different Omics tools.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aimed to evaluate the influence of different production ecosystems, three in native and cultivated pastures (extensive), at two seasons of the year (dry and rainy), and one in confinement (intensive) in the Eastern Amazon, on the mineral content of buffalo liver raised on these ecosystems. Twelve male buffalo ( = 12), aged between 24 and 36 months, slaughtered in commercial slaughterhouses, were used in each of the ecosystems considered: Marajó; Lower Amazon; Cultivated Pasture, and in confinement system, Pará, Brazil. Approximately 5 g of liver was collected, stored and frozen until lyophilization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHealthy food must have an adequate balance of macroelements, such as calcium or phosphorus and, microelements, such as iron, copper. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of three extensive systems, during the dry and rainy seasons, and an intensive (feedlot) system in the Eastern Amazon, on the muscle mineral profile of water buffaloes. In total, 12 male buffaloes, aged between 24 and 36 months, slaughtered in commercial slaughterhouses, were used in each of the systems considered: Marajó island, Santarém, Nova Timboteua, and a feedlot.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMonogastric feeding is dependent on costly conventional feedstuffs. Microalgae such as Chlorella vulgaris are a sustainable alternative; however, its recalcitrant cell wall hinders monogastric digestion. Carbohydrate Active Enzyme (CAZyme) supplementation is a possible solution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimals (Basel)
February 2022
The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of distinct production systems and seasonal variation in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon on the meat lipid composition of water buffaloes. Water buffaloes were reared in commercial farms in the Eastern Amazon either in extensive systems (Marajó Island, Nova Timboteua and Santarém locations), during rainy or dry seasons, or intensive (feedlot) systems. Animals reared in extensive systems were fed natural pastures, and those reared in feedlots were fed sorghum silage and commercial pellets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeaweeds have caught the attention of the scientific community in recent years. Their production can mitigate the negative impact of anthropogenic activity and their use in animal nutrition reduces the dependency on conventional crops such as maize and soybean meal. In the context of monogastric animals, novel approaches have made it possible to optimise their use in feed, namely polysaccharide extraction, biomass fermentation, enzymatic processing, and feed supplementation with carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Brazilian Amazon has witnessed, in the last decades, an increase in the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) inventory, with interesting productivity results. As the Brazilian Amazon contains the main water buffalo population in the Americas, the aim of this work is to review its most relevant production systems and some peculiarities about meat and milk production in this territory. The opening section describes the Amazon Basin, the most common water buffalo breeds, a brief history of the local livestock farming beginning in 1644.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Seasonal weight loss (SWL) is a very important limitation to the production of ruminants in the Mediterranean and Tropical regions. In these areas, long dry seasons lead to poor pastures with low nutritional value. During the dry season, ruminants, particularly those raised in extensive production systems, lose around 30% of their body weight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeasonal weight loss (SWL) is a major constraint to extensive animal production systems. The Australian sheep production is based on merino sheep, a European breed not tolerant to SWL. Tolerant alternative breeds such as the fat-tailed Damara and the Dorper have been increasingly used in Australia and elsewhere, due to their robustness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGoats are of special importance in the Mediterranean and tropical regions for producing a variety of dairy products. The scarcity of pastures during the dry season leads to seasonal weight loss (SWL), which affects milk production. In this work, we studied the effect of feed-restriction on two dairy goat breeds, with different tolerance levels to SWL: the Majorera breed (tolerant) and the Palmera breed (susceptible).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBitter taste has been extensively studied in mammalian species and is associated with sensitivity to toxins and with food choices that avoid dangerous substances in the diet. At the molecular level, bitter compounds are sensed by bitter taste receptor proteins (T2R) present at the surface of taste receptor cells in the gustatory papillae. Our work aims at exploring the phylogenetic relationships of T2R gene sequences within different ruminant species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rabbit is an important species as both a production animal and as a model organism in physiology, pharmaceutical, and numerous other studies. Similar to other species, the rabbit skeletal muscle proteome has been characterized, first using 2DE mapping and more recently using high-throughput shotgun proteomics. This article is a commentary on "Shotgun proteomics analysis of the sarcoplasmic reticulum preparations from rabbit skeletal muscle" (Z.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe pig (Sus scrofa) is one of the most important animal species used for meat production worldwide, playing a fundamental role in numerous cultures from Southern Europe to the Pacific Islands. Additionally, it is broadly used as an experimental animal for several purposes, from physiological studies to drug testing and surgical training. Proteomics studies have covered both physiological and biomedical application studies of pig to a much greater extent than for any other farm animal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProteomic approaches are gaining increasing importance in the context of all fields of animal and veterinary sciences, including physiology, productive characterization, and disease/parasite tolerance, among others. Proteomic studies mainly aim the proteome characterization of a certain organ, tissue, cell type or organism, either in a specific condition or comparing protein differential expression within two or more selected situations. Due to the high complexity of samples, usually total protein extracts, proteomics relies heavily on separation procedures, being 2D-electrophoresis and HPLC the most common, as well as on protein identification using mass spectrometry (MS) based methodologies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTick-borne diseases (TBDs) affect 80% of the world's cattle population, hampering livestock production throughout the world. Livestock industry is important to rural populations not only as food supply, but also as a source of income. Tick control is usually achieved by using acaricides which are expensive, deleterious to the environment and can induce chemical resistance of vectors; the development of more effective and sustainable control methods is therefore required.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Rickettsiales Ehrlichia ruminantium (ER) is the causative agent of heartwater, a fatal tick-borne disease of livestock in sub-Saharan Africa and in the Caribbean, posing strong economical constraints to livestock production. In an attempt to identify the most prominent proteins expressed by this bacterium, especially those encoded by the major antigenic protein 1 (map1) multigene family, a proteome map of ER cultivated in endothelial cells was constructed by using two dimensional gel electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry. Among the sixty-four spots detected, we could identify only four proteins from the MAP1-family; the other proteins detected were mainly related to energy, amino acid and general metabolism (26%), to protein turnover, chaperones and survival (21%) and to information processes (14%) or classified as hypothetical proteins (23%).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHamadryas baboons possess salivary proline-rich proteins (PRP), as indicated by the presence of pink-staining protein bands using 1D SDS gel electrophoresis and Coomassie R250 staining. The ability of these protein bands to interact with tannic acid was further examined. In a tannin-binding assay using 5 µg tannic acid mixed with hamadryas whole saliva, we recently found four distinct protein bands of apparently 72, 55, 20, and 15 kDa that were precipitated during the experiments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe cyanobacteria Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii is considered a threat to aquatic organisms due to the production of the toxin cylindrospermopsin (CYN). Despite the numerous reports evidencing the toxic effects of C. raciborskii cells and CYN in different species, not much is known regarding the toxicity mechanisms associated with this toxin and the cyanobacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF