Dietary protein restriction regulates skeletal muscle fiber metabolic characteristics associated with the FGF21-ERK1/2 pathway

Shuo Li; Haopeng Zhong; Zirui Wang; Jun Chen; Zhouyin Huang; Tiande Zou; Jinming You

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.109249

Dietary protein restriction regulates skeletal muscle fiber metabolic characteristics associated with the FGF21-ERK1/2 pathway

iScience. 2024 Feb 19;27(3):109249. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109249. eCollection 2024 Mar 15.

Authors

Shuo Li¹, Haopeng Zhong¹, Zirui Wang¹, Jun Chen¹, Zhouyin Huang¹, Tiande Zou¹, Jinming You¹

Affiliation

¹ Jiangxi Province Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Jiangxi Province Key Innovation Center of Integration in Production and Education for High-quality and Safe Livestock and Poultry, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang 330045, China.

Abstract

Under conditions of dietary amino acid balance, decreasing the dietary crude protein (CP) level in pigs has a beneficial effect on meat quality. To further elucidate the mechanism, we explored the alteration of muscle fiber characteristics and key regulators related to myogenesis in the skeletal muscle of pigs fed a protein restricted diet. Compared to pigs fed a normal protein diet, dietary protein restriction significantly increased the slow-twitch muscle fiber proportion in skeletal muscle, succinic dehydrogenase (SDH) activity, the concentrations of ascorbate, biotin, palmitoleic acid, and the ratio of s-adenosylhomocysteine (SAM) to s-adenosylhomocysteine (SAH), but the fast-twitch muscle fiber proportion, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity, the concentrations of ATP, glucose-6-phosphate, SAM, and SAH in skeletal muscle, and the ratio of serum triiodothyronine (T3) to tetraiodothyronine (T4) were decreased. In conclusion, we demonstrated that dietary protein restriction induced skeletal muscle fiber remodeling association the regulation of FGF21-ERK1/2-mTORC1 signaling in weaned piglets.

Keywords: Animal nutrition; Laboratory animal science; Metabolomics.