Foroutan Aidin, Wishart David S, Fitzsimmons Carolyn
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Front Genet. 2021 Nov 1;12:720268. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.720268. eCollection 2021.
Approximately 70% of the cost of beef production is impacted by dietary intake. Maximizing production efficiency of beef cattle requires not only genetic selection to maximize feed efficiency (i.e., residual feed intake (RFI)), but also adequate nutrition throughout all stages of growth and development to maximize efficiency of growth and reproductive capacity, even during gestation. RFI as a measure of feed efficiency in cattle has been recently accepted and used in the beef industry, but the effect of selection for RFI upon the dynamics of gestation has not been extensively studied, especially in the context of fluctuating energy supply to the dam and fetus. Nutrient restriction during gestation has been shown to negatively affect postnatal growth and development as well as fertility of beef cattle offspring. This, when combined with the genetic potential for RFI, may significantly affect energy partitioning in the offspring and subsequently important performance traits. In this review, we discuss: 1) the importance of RFI as a measure of feed efficiency and how it can affect other economic traits in beef cattle; 2) the influence of prenatal nutrition on physiological phenotypes in calves; 3) the benefits of investigating the interaction of genetic selection for RFI and prenatal nutrition; 4) how metabolomics, transcriptomics, and epigenomics have been employed to investigate the underlying biology associated with prenatal nutrition, RFI, or their interactions in beef cattle; and 5) how the integration of omics information is adding a level of deeper understanding of the genetic architecture of phenotypic traits in cattle.
牛肉生产成本中约70%受日粮摄入量影响。要实现肉牛生产效率最大化，不仅需要通过基因选择来提高饲料效率（即剩余采食量（RFI）），还需要在生长发育的各个阶段提供充足营养，以实现生长效率和繁殖能力最大化，即使在妊娠期也是如此。RFI作为衡量牛饲料效率的指标，最近已被肉牛行业接受并应用，但针对RFI的选择对妊娠动态的影响尚未得到广泛研究，尤其是在母体和胎儿能量供应波动的情况下。妊娠期营养限制已被证明会对肉牛后代的出生后生长发育以及繁殖力产生负面影响。这与RFI的遗传潜力相结合，可能会显著影响后代的能量分配，进而影响重要的生产性能性状。在本综述中，我们将讨论：1）RFI作为衡量饲料效率的指标的重要性以及它如何影响肉牛的其他经济性状；2）产前营养对犊牛生理表型的影响；3）研究RFI基因选择与产前营养相互作用的益处；4）代谢组学、转录组学和表观基因组学如何被用于研究肉牛产前营养、RFI或它们之间相互作用的潜在生物学机制；5）组学信息的整合如何加深对牛表型性状遗传结构的理解。
