Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jul 21:11:84.
doi: 10.1186/s40104-020-00482-x. eCollection 2020.

Diet induced the change of mtDNA copy number and metabolism in Angus cattle

Ying Bai  1   2 , José A Carrillo  2   3 , Yaokun Li  2 , Yanghua He  2   4 , Jiuzhou Song  2
Affiliations

Diet induced the change of mtDNA copy number and metabolism in Angus cattle

Ying Bai et al. J Anim Sci Biotechnol. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: Grass-fed and grain-fed Angus cattle differ in the diet regimes. However, the intricate mechanisms of different beef quality and other phenotypes induced by diet differences are still unclear. Diet affects mitochondrial function and dynamic behavior in response to changes in energy demand and supply. In this study, we examined the mtDNA copy number, mitochondria-related genes expression, and metabolic biomarkers in grass-fed and grain-fed Angus cattle.

Results: We found that the grass-fed group had a higher mtDNA copy number than the grain-fed group. Among different tissues, the mtDNA copy number was the highest in the liver than muscle, rumen, and spleen. Based on the transcriptome of the four tissues, a lower expression of mtDNA-encoded genes in the grass-fed group compared to the grain-fed group was discovered. For the mitochondria-related nuclear genes, however, most of them were significantly down-regulated in the muscle of the grass-fed group and up-regulated in the other three tissues. In which, COX6A2, POLG2, PPIF, DCN, and NDUFA12, involving in ATP synthesis, mitochondrial replication, transcription, and maintenance, might contribute to the alterations of mtDNA copy number and gene expression. Meanwhile, 40 and 23 metabolic biomarkers were identified in the blood and muscle of the grain-fed group compared to a grass-fed group, respectively. Integrated analysis of the altered metabolites and gene expression revealed the high expression level of MDH1 in the grain-fed group might contribute to the mitochondrial NADH oxidation and spermidine metabolism for adapting the deletion mtDNA copy number.

Conclusions: Overall, the study may provide further deep insight into the adaptive and regulatory modulations of the mitochondrial function in response to different feeding systems in Angus cattle.

Keywords: Beef quality; Different diet; Gene expression; Metabolism; MtDNA.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The mtDNA copy number variation in different tissues between grass-fed and grain-fed
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Heat map showing relative expression of mtDNA encoded genes in the four tissues of grass-fed and grain-fed Angus cattle. The average fragments per kilobase of transcript per million (FPKM) value of the two replicates was used as the gene expression, and the heat map was plotted based on log2(FPKM+ 1). The color legend represents the appropriate level, with red indicating high expression level and the blue indicating low expression level
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Differentially expressed mitochondria-related nuclear genes. a Number of up- or down-regulated DEGs in the four tissues. Up-regulated and down-regulated genes were displayed in red and green, respectively. b Venn diagram showing the number of DEGs commonly expressed in the four tissues
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Potential metabolic biomarkers and metabolic pathways in blood and muscle of grain-fed group compared to the grass-fed group. B, Blood; M, Muscle; Color highlighting indicates the common six metabolites in the two tissues
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
The pathway impact view of the metabolic biomarkers identified in muscle and blood tissue from the grass-fed and grain-fed group, respectively. a the pathway impact view of the metabolic biomarkers identified in muscle. b the pathway impact view of the metabolic biomarkers identified in blood. The X- and Y-axes represent the pathway impact value and pathway enrichment value, respectively; larger sizes and darker colors represent higher pathway enrichment and impact values
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Integrated metabolic pathway analysis from combined metabolites and differentially expressed mitochondrial-related genes in (a) muscle or (b) blood. The red box represents the significantly enriched pathways
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Provenza FD, Kronberg SL, Gregorini P. Is Grassfed meat and dairy better for human and environmental health? Front Nutr. 2019;6:26. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Manoli I, Alesci S, Blackman MR, Su YA, Rennert OM, Chrousos GP. Mitochondria as key components of the stress response. Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2007;18(5):190–198. - PubMed
    1. Jayashankar V, Mueller IA, Rafelski SM. Shaping the multi-scale architecture of mitochondria. Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2016;38:45–51. - PubMed
    1. Kunz WS. Different metabolic properties of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation in different cell types--important implications for mitochondrial cytopathies. Exp Physiol. 2003;88(1):149–154. - PubMed
    1. Johnson DT, Harris RA, Blair PV, Balaban RS. Functional consequences of mitochondrial proteome heterogeneity. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 2007;292(2):C698–C707. - PubMed