Biological variations in efficiency of nutrient utilization

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The overall goal of my metabolic research program is to make significant contributions to the beef and dairy production in Canada that addresses the increasing consumer demands for a sustainable and socially responsible animal agricultural industry. The long term goal of this Discovery Grant is to make significant contribution to elucidate the physiological mechanisms regulating the variation in efficiency of nutrient utilization between animals of the same type in terms of sex, age, breed etc on similar feed. There is enough evidence that there is a genetic basis for the variation in feed intake relative to maintenance and gain requirements. These differences in feed intake, measured as below or above the expected on the basis of size and growth are now measured as residual feed intake. We believe that these differences must be underpinned by measurable biological processes at the physiological level.The novelty of this research is the combination of transport mechanisms and metabolic processes in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) in helping to understand the molecular and physiological processes responsible for production characteristics of agricultural species.The expected significance outcomes of this work are: 1) It will lay the foundation for a bovine transport and metabolism model and the associated methods for analyses and measurements of transport and metabolic capabilities of bovine tissues. 2) It will lay the ground work aimed at offering new approaches of feed/food evaluation that considers not only ruminal and post- ruminal digestion but the fates of metabolic fates nutrients in the GIT and adipose tissue.