September 25, 2019, by Aleisha Turner

Increasing lean muscle mass in pigs

Researchers at the University of Nottingham in conjunction with scientist at Zoetis were comparing the effect of growth hormones and beta agonists on pig growth. By integrating time series RNAseq, microarray and metabolomic datasets using machine learning we were able to identify some the key gene networks and enriched molecular pathways that could in part accounted for the increase in observed growth rate in response to both growth hormone and beta agonist treatment. We were also able to show that the mechanisms of each were fundamentally different at a genetic level. This research has recently been published in nature scientific reports.

Brown, D., Ryan, K., Daniel, Z., Mareko, M., Talbot, R., Moreton, J., Giles, T.C., Emes, R., Hodgman, C., Parr, T. and Brameld, J.M., 2018. The Beta-adrenergic agonist, Ractopamine, increases skeletal muscle expression of Asparagine Synthetase as part of an integrated stress response gene program. Scientific reports, 8(1), p.15915.

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