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. 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.

本研究检验了如下假说：以昆虫粉（insect meal, IM）作为蛋白质来源，会影响生长猪的中间代谢。为验证该假说，将5周龄的杂交仔猪按初始体重均衡原则随机分为3组，每组10头，分别饲喂等氮日粮：对照组（CON，未添加昆虫粉）、5%黄粉虫（Tenebrio molitor L.）昆虫粉组（IM5）以及10%黄粉虫昆虫粉组（IM10），试验周期为4周。随后采集骨骼肌样本并开展转录组学（transcriptomics）分析。骨骼肌转录组学分析结果显示，IM10组与CON组间共鉴定出198个差异表达转录本。针对微阵列分析（microarray analysis），本研究分别取CON组、IM5组、IM10组的6份RNA样本，与Affymetrix GeneChip Porcine Gene 1.0 Sense Target芯片进行杂交实验。