Evaluation of the metabolic effects of insect meal from Tenebrio molitor L. in skeletal muscle of growing pigs by transcriptomics. Evaluation of the metabolic effects of insect meal from Tenebrio molitor L. in skeletal muscle of growing pigs by transcriptomics

The hypothesis was tested that insect meal (IM) as protein source influences intermediary metabolism of growing pigs. To test this, 5-week-old crossbreed pigs were randomly assigned to 3 groups of 10 pigs each with similar body weights (BW) and fed isonitrogenous diets either without (CON) or with 5 % IM (IM5) or 10 % IM (IM10) from Tenebrio molitor L. for 4 weeks and skeletal muscle was analyzed using transcriptomics. Transcriptomics of skeletal muscle revealed a total of 198 transcripts differentially expressed between IM10 and CON. Overall design: For microarray analysis, n = 6 RNA samples each of the group CON, group IM5 and group IM10 were used for hybridization to the Affymetrix GeneChip Porcine Gene 1.0 Sense Target array.