G protein coupled receptor (GPR120) is function as the receptor of ω-3 long chain unsaturated fatty acid, which is benefit for human health. However, it is hard to do the research on GPR120 in human body. Pigs, which is more popular for us, have the similar omnivorous food pattern, nutritional and digestive aspects, haematological and cardiovascular with human, and are suitable animal model for investigation of human nutrition. Scientists believe that doing experiments on pigs may help them better understand human beings.
It is very meaningful work to clone the porcine GPR120 and determine its expression profiles in different Chinese indigenous pig breeds. The results might help to improve infant nutrition and clarify the mechanism of phenotype diversity, especially ratio of fat to body weight and lipid metabolism in different pig breeds, and boost the discovery of regulation techniques for lipid metabolism.
Researchers in Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISA) first deduced that the expression profiling of pGPR120 may have significant differences between Chinese indigenous pig breeds and Landrace pig, even among different Chinese indigenous pig breeds, for their obvious feed resource.
They selected five Chinese indigenous pig breeds, including Huanjiang mini-pig from Huanjiang, Guangxi; Bama mini-pig from Bama Guangxi; Taoyuan black pig from Taoyuan Hunan; Ningxiang pig from Ningxiang, Hunan; Lantang pig from Xinfeng, Guangdong and Landrace pigs from Changsha, Hunan. All of them are 14 days of age.
They found that the expression profiles of GPR120 in different Chinese indigenous pig breeds are significant different. For GPR120 may be one new candidate therapeutic target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic diseases, their findings suggested that the Chinese indigenous pig breeds may be candidate model for researches on GPR120 and boost drug discovery for metabolic diseases.
This study was jointly supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB127301, 2012CB124704), National Natural Science Foundation of China (31110103909, 30901040, 31272463, 30928018 and 31101729), National Scientific and Technology Support Project (2011BAD26B002-5) and Chinese Academy of Sciences Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientists (Grant No. 2011T2S15).
This research entitled "Molecular cloning and expression profiling of G protein coupled receptor 120 in Landrace pig and different Chinese indigenous pig breeds" was published in Journal of Food, Agriculture & Environment.