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Dietary l-leucine supplementation enhances intestinal development in suckling piglets

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Abstract

l-Leucine is a signaling amino acid in animal metabolism. It is unknown whether supplementing l-leucine to breast-fed neonates may enhance their small-intestinal development. This hypothesis was tested with a piglet model. Seven-day-old sow-reared pigs with an average birth weight of 1.45 kg were assigned randomly to the control or leucine group (n = 30/group). Piglets in the leucine group were orally administrated with 1.4 g l-leucine/kg body weight, whereas piglets in the control group received isonitrogenous l-alanine, twice daily for 14 days. The supplemental l-leucine amounted to 200 % of l-leucine intake from sow’s milk by 7-day-old pigs. At the end of the 2-week experiment, tissue samples were collected for determining intestinal morphology, expression of genes for intestinal leucine transporters (real-time RT-PCR and western blot analysis), and plasma metabolites and hormones. l-leucine administration increased (P < 0.05) villus height in the duodenum, an elevated ratio of villus height to crypt depth in the duodenum and ileum, plasma concentrations of leucine, glutamine and asparagine, as well as body-weight gains. mRNA levels for l-leucine transporters (SLC6A14, SLC6A19 and SLC7A9) and the abundance of the ATB0,+ protein were increased (P < 0.05) but those for SLC7A7 mRNA and the LAT2 protein were decreased (P < 0.05) in the jejunum of leucine-supplemented piglets, compared with the control. Plasma concentrations of ammonia, urea, triglycerides, and growth-related hormones did not differ between the control and leucine groups. Collectively, these results indicate that l-leucine supplementation improves intestinal development and whole-body growth in suckling piglets with a normal birth weight.

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Abbreviations

AA:

Amino acids

BCAA:

Branched-chain amino acids

BW:

Body weight

IGF-1:

Insulin-like growth factor 1

mTOR:

Mammalian target of rapamycin

RT-PCR:

Reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB127302), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31172217, 31272450, 31272451), the Chinese Universities Scientific Fund (2013RC002), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0522), and the Program for Beijing Municipal Excellent Talents, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (No. 2014-67015-21770), and Texas A&M AgriLife Research (H-8200).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics statement

The use of animals for this research was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of China Agricultural University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Department of Animal Nutrition and Feed Science, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

    Yuli Sun, Zhenlong Wu, Wei Li, Chen Zhang, Kaiji Sun, Yun Ji, Bin Wang, Ning Jiao, Beibei He, Weiwei Wang, Zhaolai Dai & Guoyao Wu

  2. Department of Animal Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Guoyao Wu

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  1. Yuli Sun
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  2. Zhenlong Wu
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Correspondence to Zhenlong Wu.

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Sun, Y., Wu, Z., Li, W. et al. Dietary l-leucine supplementation enhances intestinal development in suckling piglets. Amino Acids 47, 1517–1525 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-015-1985-2

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