Pork is an important protein source for people in daily life, and pork quality is closely associated with the quality of people’s lives. Conceptually, energy is the power for the biosynthesis of proteins or others. Then are there any relations between energy and pork quality? Indeed, energy homeostasis is critical for pork quality because it can predispose a large part of energy flux to biosynthesize proteins, amino acids, fatty acids, etc. Energy homeostasis-associated gene (Enho), encoded a secreted protein, adropin, is known for the specific functions in maintaining energy homeostasis and insulin response. Therefore, based on the conception above, maybe Enho is a potential target gene for meat quality through regulatory roles in energy metabolism.

Currently, the study conducted by Prof. YIN Yulong from Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences  has uncovered the information of Enho in piglet. Scientists analyze the nucleotide sequence of porcine ( Sus scrofa ) homologue of the Enho gene, named pEnho. The gene sequence has been submitted into the GenBank of The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and the access number is GQ414763. Complicated bioinformatics analysis of gene and protein has shown that the pEnho gene exhibits high similarity to bovine, human, and mouse Enho gene, and encodes a protein of 76 amino acids which also shows high similarity to human, mouse, and bovine adropin, suggesting that human, pig, bovine, and mouse adropin share similar protein secondary structure. At the same time, scientists find that pEnho distributes in many tissues including liver, muscle, anterior jejunum, posterior jejunum, and ileum, of which ileum has the highest pEnho expression. Of note, the expression of pEnho changes with the development of piglets, and the amount of pEnho mRNA in all tissues is highest on day 7. "This research can enrich the knowledge about glucose and lipid metabolism in piglet, and promote the health and growth of piglet through adropin regulation, which finally improves the pork meat quality." said WANG Shengpin, one of the researchers.

The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Key Program of Hunan Province Scientific and Technology Planning Project, the Special Fund for Innovative and Entrepreneurship Talents of Changsha City, and the Key Program of Changsha Scientific and Technology Planning Project, China.

The main findings of this study have published on Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE B (Biomedicine & Biotechnology).Details can be found at http://www.zju.edu.cn/jzus/iparticle.php?doi=10.1631/jzus.B1400260