Weaning is a crucial phase in swine production because piglets must rapidly adapt to dramatic changes in their social and physical environments, for example, leaving from their mothers, staying with strangers, and increasing in serum cortisol. The combined effects of these stressors’ results in villous atrophy and a sustained impairment of intestinal barrier function, which consequently reduces gut digestive and absorptive capacities.

N-carbamyglutamate is a metabolically stable analogue of N-acetylglutamate and it plays an important role in regulating arginine synthesis. Previous reports showed that arginine deficiency was a major factor limiting maximal growth of milk-fed piglets and dietary supplementation of N-carbamylglutamate improved growth performance of weaned piglets. However, the underlying mechanism remains to be characterized.

Recently, Researchers from Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISA), University of Guelph, and University of Manitoba & University of Ottawa, Canada found out that dietary N-carbamyglutamate supplementation enhanced growth rate and the efficiency of feed utilization in weaned Huanjiang mini-pig piglets. The jejunal mRNA expression of Slc6a19, Slc7a9, and Slc1a1 (amino acids transporters), and protein abundance of ASCT2, B0AT1, b0,+AT, y+LAT1, and EAAC1 (amino acids transporters) was also enhanced by N-carbamyglutamate. Furthermore, the contents of ammonia, urea nitrogen, and amino acids in plasma were all altered by supplementation with N-carbamyglutamate. These findings indicate that dietary supplementation with N-carbamyglutamate improved growth performance of weaned piglets by improving intestinal absorptive function (through increasing the expression of amino acids transporters in the intestine).

The research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB124704), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31110103909, 30901040, 30928018, and 31101729), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientists Grant (No. 2011T2S15).

The study entitled “Dietary supplementation with N-carbamylglutamate increases the expression of intestinal amino acid transporters in weaned Huanjiang mini-pig piglets” has been published in Volume 91, Issue 6, Jun 2013 of Journal of Animal Science, details could be found at http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/91/6/2740.