ACTA VETERINARIA ET ZOOTECHNICA SINICA ›› 2017, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (1): 91-98.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2017.01.011

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Effect of Portal Ammonia on Urea Cycle and Gluconeogenesis in Liver of Pig

BAO Zheng-xi, LI Lu-lu, WANG Tong-xin, LIU Shuang, ZHANG Ping, HUANG Fei-ruo*   

  1. (College of Animal Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China)
  • Received:2016-05-31 Online:2017-01-23 Published:2017-01-23

Abstract:

This experiment was conducted to study the effect of portal ammonia on urea cycle and gluconeogenesis in liver of pig. Eight pigs (Duroc×Landrace×Yorkshire), with the average weight of 20 kg, were randomly assigned to two treatments with 4 pigs in each treatment. Pigs were surgically implanted with catheter in the portal vein and hepatic vein. Then 65 and 35 mmol•L-1 of ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) were infused into liver by portal catheter. Serum samples were collected to analyze metabolites based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry metabolomics. Liver samples were collected to examine gene expression and enzyme activity in urea cycle and gluconeogenesis. The results showed that, compared with low concentration NH4Cl, the infusion of high concentration NH4Cl significantly increased the content of urea, glucose and glucose-6-phosphate(P<0.05), the content of alanine, glutamate and aspartate were significantly decreased (P<0.05); addtionally, high concentration NH4Cl significantly upregulated the expression of carbamoyl-phosphate synthase 1 (CPS1), ornithine carbamoyl-transferase (OTC), arginase 1 (Arg1), phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PCK) and glucose-6-phosphatase (G6PC), meanwhile the corresponding enzyme activities increased 50.77%, 44.47%, 41.24%, 46.99% and 54.57%(P<0.05), respectively. These results indicated that, with the ammonia load increased into liver, the urea cycle was increased and the additional nitrogen was supplied by amino acid metabolism (alanine, aspartate, glutamate), of which the carbon skeleton were used for hepatic gluconeogenesis.

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