Beef cattle

Longissimus muscle lipidomics profile of Nellore cattle submitted to fetal programming

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Abstract

Fetal programming (FP) is a concept based on prenatal environmental changes with implications for postnatal life. In beef cattle, this concept has been used in nutritional studies aimed at improving performance, reproduction, meat quality, and other traits. Several studies have demonstrated permanent metabolic changes which can reflects on meat lipid profile in cattle subjected to different nutritional conditions during the prenatal phase. This study evaluated the lipidomic profile of muscle in cattle that underwent FP. Twenty-eight pregnant Nellore heifers were divided into two distinct nutritional groups during the gestational phase. Both groups were allocated to Urochloa brizantha cv Marandu pasture, with one group receiving only mineral supplementation - Non-Supplemented (NS) - and the other receiving protein-energy supplementation throughout gestation - Supplemented (SUP). After birth, all calves were subjected to the same environmental, nutritional, and sanitary conditions until slaughter at 22 months of age. Samples were collected 24 hours after slaughter from the Longissimus thoracis (LT) muscle for targeted lipidomic analyses. Lipids were extracted and analyzed using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM)-profiling. Lipidome data were uploaded to MetaboAnalyst 6.0 and were Pareto-scaled prior to statistical and bioinformatics analyses. Volcano plot analysis was performed and lipids with a fold change ≥ 1.2 and P-value ≤ 0.05 were considered as differently abundant (DAL) between treatments. Unsupervised (principal component analysis [PCA]) and supervised (partial least square discriminant analysis [PLS-DA]) analyses were also performed to investigate whether clusters exist between the groups. In the PLS-DA, the variable importance in projection (VIP) was used to rank the lipids based on their importance in discriminating groups. A pathway-based enrichment analysis was performed by using the DAL to identify the altered enriched pathways (P P = 0.413), the PLS-DA did segregate (accuracy = 0.50; Q² = 0.76; R² = 0.16). Based on VIP scores, 46 compounds (mainly PC and TG) contributed the most (VIP > 1.0) to the overall model separation and the classification accuracy in the PLS-DA plot. The pathway-based enrichment analysis revealed 20 significant pathways between NS and SUP offspring The NS animals appeared to rely more heavily on phospholipid degradation and carnitine-mediated acetyl flux as adaptive responses to suboptimal mitochondrial function, whereas SUP animals likely promote more stable lipid homeostasis, efficient β-oxidation, and improved redox balance. Thus, these results reinforce the concept that FP can reprogram lipid metabolism and mitochondrial dynamics, influencing postnatal muscle bioenergetics and potentially beef quality.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Santana, M., Brito, L., Carvalho, F., Polizel, G., Fernandes, A., Furlan, É., Antonelo, D., Rocha, A. & Ferraz, J., (2026) “Longissimus muscle lipidomics profile of Nellore cattle submitted to fetal programming”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2337595. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.24398

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