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. 2022 Aug 11;12(8):738.
doi: 10.3390/metabo12080738.

Changes in Blood Metabolic Profiles Reveal the Dietary Deficiencies of Specific Nutrients and Physiological Status of Grazing Yaks during the Cold Season in Qinghai Province of China

Jian Gao  1 , Deyu Yang  2 , Zhanying Sun  1 , Jianzhang Niu  2 , Yuhong Bao  3 , Suozhu Liu  4 , Zhankun Tan  4 , Lizhuang Hao  2 , Yanfen Cheng  1 , Shujie Liu  2
Affiliations

Changes in Blood Metabolic Profiles Reveal the Dietary Deficiencies of Specific Nutrients and Physiological Status of Grazing Yaks during the Cold Season in Qinghai Province of China

Jian Gao et al. Metabolites. .

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the changes in the blood metabolic profiles of grazing yaks during the cold season to reveal their physiological status and seek the nutrients needed to be supplemented. Six castrated yaks (3 years old) with 166.8 kg (standard deviation = 5.3) of liveweight grazed in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau were used as experimental animals without supplementary feeding. Blood samples of each animal were collected in October and December 2015, and March 2016 for the analysis of serum biochemicals and metabolome. Results showed serum indices involved in protein metabolism in grazing yaks showed greater differences during the cold season than the metabolisms of energy or minerals. Cold stress in December had minor effects on the serum metabolic profiles of yaks compared with those in October. Yaks in October and December shared seven differential serum metabolites and enrichments of the "arachidonic acid metabolism" and "glycine, serine, and threonine metabolism" pathways compared with those in March caused by the shortage of feeds. Summarily, the nutrient deficiency would be influential on the physiological status of grazing yaks during the cold season, especially on the protein metabolism, which could be improved by supplementary feeds.

Keywords: blood metabolome; grazing yak; metabolic profile; nutrient deficiency.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Dynamic changes in (A) liveweights, concentrations of (B) ammonia-N and (C) microbial crude protein in the ruminal fluid of grazing yaks during the cold season. Values with different letters represent significant differences among groups (p < 0.05). Results are presented as mean ± standard deviation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Principal component analysis (PCA) and (B) sparse partial least squares-discriminant analysis (sPLS-DA) of serum metabolites in grazing yaks during the cold season.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) summary of the differential serum metabolites in October or December compared with March; pathway impact analysis based on the differential serum metabolites between (B) October and December; (C) October and March; (D) December and March. Pathway impact > 0.20 and false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05 were deemed as the key enriched pathways.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Random forest models of (A) serum indices with significant differences and (B) differential serum metabolites in grazing yaks during the cold season. Only the indices with a false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05 are presented in the figures.
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