Mourning Doves, Zenaida macroura, are Resistant to Metabolic Effects of a High Fat Diet

Abstract

Birds have naturally high glycemia relative to mammals and can serve as a natural animal model of hyperglycemia without associated mammalian‐like complications. In mice, consumption of a high fat diet (60% kcals from fat) for six weeks results in a pathologic condition characterized by increased body weight and elevated plasma insulin, glucose, and triglycerides. Thus, we hypothesized that adult Mourning Doves consuming a high fat diet (60% kcal from fat; HF; n=4) would likewise exhibit diabetes‐like pathology including hyperglycemia and altered metabolic profile when compared to birds fed a control diet (CON; n=5). All doves were housed individually and fed a nutritional balanced dove seed diet during a week‐long cage acclimation period. Next, birds were acclimated to their study diets for a week where the study diets were mixed into the seed diet in increasing amount until only the study diet remained. At the end of the four‐week experimental dietary period, we euthanized birds with an overdose of sodium pentobarbital and collected cardiac blood, liver, kidney, and pectoralis muscle for metabolomic analyses and biochemical assays. Contrary to our hypothesis, doves fed a HF diet developed few metabolite changes compared to control doves (number of altered metabolite concentrations: 19 of 137 in plasma, 4 of 152 in liver, 1 of 142 in pectoralis muscle, 3 in 150 in kidney; p<0.05). Specifically, glucose metabolite concentrations did not differ between groups. Further, we observed alterations in several metabolic pathways, but changes in only two pathways were significant (p<0.05) and concurrently of high impact (scale: 0–1; >0.60): (a) Ubiquinone and other terpenoid‐quinone biosynthesis (plasma and kidney), and (b) alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism (plasma and kidney). In addition, consumption of the HF diet did not alter body mass, plasma uric acid, pectoralis glycogen, or liver glycogen and triglycerides. In conclusion, consumption of a HF diet for four weeks did not instigate symptoms of diabetes. Elucidating the uniqueness of avian nutritional physiology, specifically their resistance to dietinduced metabolic complications, may help develop novel therapeutic agents for mammalian diabetes.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.