Recent developments in lipid metabolism in ruminants – the role of fat in maintaining animal health and performance

Abstract

Optimising farm animal performance has long been the key focus of worldwide livestock production research. Advances in the understanding of metabolism/phenotype associations have outlined the central role of the lipid metabolism of farm animals for economically relevant phenotypic traits, such as animal health (immune status, fertility/reproductive capacity, adaptability/metabolic flexibility, robustness, well being) and performance aspects (meat/milk quality and quantity) and have led to an extensive exploitation of lipid metabolism manipulation strategies (e.g. tailored nutritional regimes, alimentary/intravenous fat supplementation, rumen-protected fat feeding, hormone application). This contribution gives an overview of established concepts to tailor animals’ lipid metabolism and highlights novel strategies to expand these application-oriented approaches via improved analysis tools, omics-approaches, cell model systems and systems biology methods.