Briones Javier Munoz, Ball Brendan K, Jena Smrutiti, Lescun Timothy B, Chan Deva D, Brubaker Douglas K
Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
Purdue Interdisciplinary Life Science Program, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 Feb 8:2025.02.05.636747. doi: 10.1101/2025.02.05.636747.
The rumen harbors a diverse and dynamic microbiome vital in digesting vegetation into metabolic byproducts for energy and general biological function. Although previous studies have reported connections between the rumen and the overall health of the sheep, the exact biological process by which this occurs is not well understood. Therefore, our study aimed to quantify sheep rumen metabolites to determine if enriched biological pathways are differentiable across phenotypic features of sex, age, and weight.
We collected and quantified metabolites of rumen samples from sixteen sheep using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. We performed a series of univariate and multivariate statistical analyses to interpret the rumen metabolomics data. To identify metabolic pathways associated with the phenotypic features of sex, weight, and age, we used MetaboAnalyst, which identified amino acid metabolism as a distinguishing factor. Among the pathways, phenylalanine metabolism emerged as a key pathway differentiating sheep based on sex and age. Additionally, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan biosynthesis were exclusively associated with age. In univariate linear models, we also discovered that these amino acid and protein pathways were associated with weight by age-corrected effect. Finally, we identified arginine and proline biosynthesis as a pathway linked to metabolites with weight.
Our study identified differential pathways based on the sex, age, and weight features of sheep. Metabolites produced by the rumen may act as an indicator for sheep health and other ruminants. These findings encourage further investigation of the differentially produced metabolites to assess overall sheep health.
瘤胃中存在着多样且动态变化的微生物群落，这对于将植物性饲料消化为代谢副产物以获取能量和维持一般生物学功能至关重要。尽管先前的研究报道了瘤胃与绵羊整体健康之间的联系，但这种联系发生的确切生物学过程尚不清楚。因此，我们的研究旨在对绵羊瘤胃代谢物进行定量分析，以确定在性别、年龄和体重等表型特征上是否存在富集的可区分生物学途径。
我们使用液相色谱 - 串联质谱法收集并定量了16只绵羊瘤胃样本中的代谢物。我们进行了一系列单变量和多变量统计分析来解释瘤胃代谢组学数据。为了识别与性别、体重和年龄表型特征相关的代谢途径，我们使用了MetaboAnalyst，该软件将氨基酸代谢识别为一个区分因素。在这些途径中，苯丙氨酸代谢成为基于性别和年龄区分绵羊的关键途径。此外，苯丙氨酸、酪氨酸和色氨酸的生物合成仅与年龄相关。在单变量线性模型中，我们还发现这些氨基酸和蛋白质途径在经年龄校正后与体重相关。最后，我们将精氨酸和脯氨酸的生物合成确定为与体重相关代谢物的一条途径。
我们的研究确定了基于绵羊性别、年龄和体重特征的差异途径。瘤胃产生的代谢物可能作为绵羊健康和其他反刍动物健康的一个指标。这些发现鼓励进一步研究差异产生的代谢物以评估绵羊的整体健康状况。
