Recently, the scientific research team led by Yin Yulong, an academician of the CAE Member and a researcher of the Institute of Subtropical Agroecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made progress in the research on the mechanism of muscle growth retardation in piglets.

In the process of intensive breeding, immune stress is commonly present in the feeding process of weaned piglets, leading to muscle protein degradation and growth arrest in piglets, affecting the meat production rate and quality during the fattening stage, and causing economic losses to the pig industry. Therefore, effectively alleviating immune stress in piglets is an urgent problem to be solved in current pig production. However, little is currently known about the mechanisms underlying muscle protein degradation and growth arrest in immune stressed piglets, resulting in weak targeted nutritional regulation measures and affecting the healthy breeding of piglets.

The team explored the dynamic changes in the growth and development of intestinal, liver, and muscle tissues in weaned piglets under immune stress, and found that immune stress can slowly repair the damage to intestinal and liver tissues within 15 days, while muscle tissue damage cannot be repaired; The main period of muscle injury is in the early stages of stress, and there is a significant positive correlation between muscle weight and piglet weight, indicating that weaning can induce muscle growth inhibition, thereby affecting pig production efficiency. Using a chronic immune stress model, the study further revealed that the mechanism of immune stress induced muscle growth arrest in weaned piglets is related to a decrease in the abundance of gut microbiota Bacteroidetes, an increase in systemic inflammation, and disruption of mitochondrial dynamic homeostasis. The above achievements provide targets for nutritional regulation to promote muscle growth and improve growth performance in piglets.

The related research findings, titled LPS related muscle loss is associated with the transformation of Bacteroidetes foundation, systemic inflation, and mitochondrial psychology in a well rounded pig model, were published in Science China Life Sciences. The research work has been supported by the General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Talent Project, the National Key Research and Development Plan, and the National Pig Industry System Special Fund.

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