Abstract
This experiment was conducted to examine the effect of dietary copper supplementation on ghrelin mRNA expression level in the fundic gland of growing pigs. A total of 45 crossbred pigs were randomly assigned to three groups of 15 pigs, five replicates of three animals comprised each group. Pigs were allocated to diets that contained 5 mg/kg copper (as the control group), 125 mg/kg copper sulfate, or 125 mg/kg copper methionine. At the end of the experiment, five pigs were selected at random from each group, slaughtered, and collected the fundic gland for determination of ghrelin mRNA expression level. The results showed that average daily gain, average daily feed intake, absolute weight, serum growth hormone (GH) concentration, and ghrelin mRNA level were higher in pigs fed the diets with 125 mg/kg copper methionine and 125 mg/kg copper sulfate (P < 0.05), than in pigs fed a diet with 5 mg/kg copper. These data suggest that high dietary copper (125 mg/kg) appears to increase feed intake and promote weight gain by enhancing the secretion of GH and ghrelin mRNA level in growing pigs.
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Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-11-0199), the National Key Technology R&D Program (Grant No. 2012BAD12B03), the Educational Commission of Jilin Province (201045), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 30170713, 30600441, 30972212, 30871897 and 31072178) and the Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of Jilin University (Grant No. 201100009).
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Wenyan Yang, Jianguo Wang, and Xiaoyan Zhu contributed equally to this study, Jilin University and Jilin Agricultural University contributed equally to this study.
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Yang, W., Wang, J., Zhu, X. et al. High Lever Dietary Copper Promote Ghrelin Gene Expression in the Fundic Gland of Growing Pigs. Biol Trace Elem Res 150, 154–157 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-012-9477-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12011-012-9477-7