Effects of dietary lecithin and l-carnitine on fatty acid composition and lipid-metabolic genes expression in subcutaneous fat and longissimus thoracis of growing-finishing pigs
Introduction
Soybean lecithin, a by-product of the soybean oil refining process, is a complex mixture of different phospholipids, for example phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylinositol. Large quantities of lecithin are used in animal feed as economic emulsifiers, choline supplements and essential fatty acid sources. Previous studies have reported that adding lecithin to the diet increased the digestibility of fat (Jones, Hancock, Harmon, & Walker, 1992) and improved nitrogen retention in pigs (Overland, Tokach, Cornelius, Pettigrew, & Rust, 1993). In recent years, low dose of dietary lecithin was demonstrated to improve the meat quality of pig. Akit et al. (2014) and D'Souza, Mullan, Pethick, Pluske, and Dunshea (2012) reported that low dose of dietary lecithin (3–4 g/kg) decreased pork chewiness and hardness and resulted in less pale pork. As an emulsifier, soybean lecithin is also rich in linoleic acid (C18:2n-6) and α-linolenic acid (C18:3n-3) and other unsaturated fatty acids (Li, Gao, & Huang, 2015), which may regulate fatty acid metabolism and influence the fat quality of pork. However, there is little study about the effects of low dose of dietary lecithin on fatty acid metabolism and lipid metabolism of pigs. Therefore, the effect of low dose of dietary lecithin on fatty acid metabolism in pigs requires further research.
l-Carnitine plays an important role in lipid catabolism by transferring long-chain fatty acids into the mitochondrial matrix for fatty acid β-oxidation (Xi et al., 2008). Dietary l-carnitine has been shown to improve meat quality (Chen et al., 2008), promote fatty acid oxidation and enhance the utilization of fat for energy in pigs (Owen, Jit, et al., 2001). In addition, accumulating studies have reported that fatty acid compositions of pork were regulated by dietary l-carnitine supplementation (Apple et al., 2011, Ying et al., 2013). Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of low dose of dietary lecithin and l-carnitine on the growth performance, meat quality, fatty acid composition and lipid-metabolic genes expression in subcutaneous fat and longissimus thoracis of growing-finishing pigs.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The protocols used in this experiment were approved by the Northeast Agricultural University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. All of the animal experimental procedures were approved by the Ethical and Animal Welfare Committee of Heilongjiang Province, China.
Growth performance
The growth performance of pigs fed diets supplemented with lecithin, l-carnitine and combination of both is presented in Table 3. There are no lecithin × l-carnitine interactions (P > 0.05, respectively) for ADG, ADFI and G/F. From day 0 to 30 and the last 50 days of the feeding trial, ADG, ADFI and G/F were not affected (P > 0.05, respectively) by dietary lecithin, l-carnitine and combination of both. Overall, ADG and ADFI were also not affected (P > 0.05, respectively) by dietary lecithin, l-carnitine
Discussion
In the current study, we failed to observe the growth performance was influenced by 4 g/kg lecithin supplementation. Similar to our study, D'Souza et al. (2012) reported that the growth performance of pigs was not affected by the addition of 3 g/kg lecithin to their diets. Akit et al. (2014) also reported that the final body weight, cumulative feed intake and feed conversion ratio of finishing pigs were not affected by supplementing with several amounts of lecithin in diets. However, contrary to
Conclusion
In conclusion, supplementing lecithin increased the PUFA in the subcutaneous fat and longissimus thoracis. However, in subcutaneous fat, the effect of lecithin was dependent of l-carnitine where supplementation of lecithin together with l-carnitine decreased PUFA. Dietary l-carnitine increased the IMF content when supplemented with lecithin but no effect was observed without lecithin supplementation. Dietary l-carnitine increased the lipolytic genes expression and reduced the lipogenic genes
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the China Agriculture Research System (CARS-36), National Basic Research Program (2012CB124703) and the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (2016YFD0501207).
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Both authors contributed equally to the work.