The Effects Of Acetate Supplementation On Milk Fat Synthesis In Mice
Open Access
- Author:
- Rigali, Jeremy
- Area of Honors:
- Animal Sciences
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Kevin John Harvatine, Thesis Supervisor
Troy Ott, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Acetate
Milk Fat - Abstract:
- Acetate supplementation has been shown to increase milk fat production in lactating dairy cows, likely by stimulating de novo lipogenesis in the mammary gland. Because of obvious limitations, understanding how an increased acetate supply mechanistically affects de novo lipogenesis can be challenging to study in ruminants. Thus, the objective of this experiment was to determine if acetate supplementation had comparable effects in mice so that it can be used as a model for a more mechanistic research. The hypothesis of this study was that acetate fed as sodium acetate would increase milk fat by increasing de novo fatty acid (FA) production, an apparent stimulation of de novo lipogenesis in the mammary gland. The study was conducted with 32 CD36 lactating female mice arranged in a completely randomized design (n = 8 per treatment) that were randomly assigned 1 of 4 treatments. Treatments were sodium acetate supplementation at 10% of diet (NaAcet) and two controls including sodium chloride (NaCl) fed to provide an equal amount of sodium and calcium butyrate (CaBut) fed at and equal carbon mass fed from day 7 through 12 of lactation . Dam and litter weights were recorded on day 7 through 12. On day 12 dams and pups were euthanized via CO2 asphyxiation, dam liver and pup milk clots were collected. Fatty acids were extracted from milk clots, methylated, and quantified using gas chromatography. Data were analyzed with a model that included the fixed of treatment and time course data were analyzed with repeated measures. There was an effect of treatment on milk de novo (even chained FA < 16 C), preformed (even chained FA > 16 C), and odd and branched chained FA and dam liver weight (P = 0.04, 0.002, 0.002, and 0.001, respectively). NaAcet resulted in the lowest de novo FA synthesis, contradicting the response observed in dairy cows. In conclusions, the results do not support the hypothesis of the study, probably due to an aversion of lactating mice to dietary supplementation of NaAcet. Thus, the mouse is not a recommended model to investigate the effect of acetate on milk fat synthesis.