Abstract
Heat stress (HS) negatively impacts pig production and swine health. Therefore, to understand the genetic and metabolic responses of pigs to HS, we used RNA-Seq and high resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS) NMR analyses to compare the transcriptomes and metabolomes of Duroc pigs (n = 6, 3 barrows and 3 gilts) exposed to heat stress (33 °C and 60% RH) with a control group (25 °C and 60% RH). HS resulted in the differential expression of 552 (236 up, 316 down) and 879 (540 up, 339 down) genes and significant enrichment of 30 and 31 plasma metabolites in female and male pigs, respectively. Apoptosis, response to heat, Toll-like receptor signaling and oxidative stress were enriched among the up-regulated genes, while negative regulation of the immune response, ATP synthesis and the ribosomal pathway were enriched among down-regulated genes. Twelve and ten metabolic pathways were found to be enriched (among them, four metabolic pathways, including arginine and proline metabolism, and three metabolic pathways, including pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis), overlapping between the transcriptome and metabolome analyses in the female and male group respectively. The limited overlap between pathways enriched with differentially expressed genes and enriched plasma metabolites between the sexes suggests a sex-specific response to HS in pigs.
Highlights
Heat stress affects animal husbandry worldwide and is a major environmental factor that affects animal health and production [1,2]
We investigated the impact of heat stress on Duroc pigs using high throughput RNA-Seq analysis
The result of our study concurs with all these reports; our study shows that Heat stress (HS) in pigs, as evidenced from transcriptome expression and metabolome concentration, is sexually dimorphic
Summary
Heat stress affects animal husbandry worldwide and is a major environmental factor that affects animal health and production [1,2]. The increasing environmental temperature due to global warming will affect pigs due to their lack of functional sweat glands, which would have helped in endogenous heat dissipation [3,4]. The thick subcutaneous adipose tissue in the pig, impedes effective radiant heat loss [5]. The increase in metabolic rate due to rapid lean tissue accretion increases endogenous heat production, exacerbating the innate inability of porcine animals to tolerate heat [3,6,7,8,9]. Genes 2020, 11, 540 altered carcass composition, decreased feed efficiency, inconsistent growth, reduced fecundity and poor sow performance [6], so heat stress in a pressing issue for worldwide pig production. Animals respond to heat stress by regulating physiological and metabolic changes, such as redistribution of blood flow from the body core to the periphery, and by reducing feed intake [13] to reduce metabolic heat production [14]
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