我国反刍家畜养殖受季节性影响严重，冬春季节由于草料供应不足，使得妊娠家畜面临营养不足的风险。而妊娠期的营养不足会程序性地抑制胎儿发育，且这种抑制作用与营养不足发生的时期密切相关。骨骼作为肌肉的支撑组织，对家畜正常发育及其生产性能至关重要。本项目拟以山羊为实验动物，研究妊娠前、中、后三个不同时期采食限制对胎羊骨骼的形态发育和骨骼发育相关的代谢指标，以及骨骼代谢相关基因表达水平和骨骼分化相关信号通路中关键蛋白稳定性的影响，以期初步探讨骨骼程序化抑制的分子机理。从形态、生理和分子水平层次阐明妊娠期营养不足对胎羊骨骼发育的抑制作用，并综合分析妊娠期三个不同时期采食限制对胎羊骨骼发育影响程度的差异，阐释胎羊骨骼发育响应母体营养不足的敏感性时期，为降低孕期营养不足对山羊或其它种类反刍动物胎儿骨骼发育的程序化抑制，制定各阶段相应的合理营养调控措施提供科学依据。

In China, the production of ruminants is greatly influenced by seasonal conditions as the deficient supply of forage and low nutritive value of pasture would result in maternal nutritional deficiency in dry season. It has been reported that maternal nutritional deficiency would program the development of fetus, which is associated with nutritional restricted time. Moreover, as the supporting tissue for muscle, bone development plays a vital role on the growth and production performance of domestic animals. Therefore, this project will be conducted with goats to investigate the effects of maternal feed intake restriction during early, middle and late gestation, respectively, on fetal bone development and metabolism by assessing bone morphology and metabolic parameters of bone development. The mRNA expression levels of bone metabolism genes and the key protein expression levels in some pathways related to bone development will also be determined to explore the programming mechanism induced by maternal undernutrition at molecular level. The sensibility of nutritional restricted periods to fetal bone development will be stated upon the variable results of fetal bone programming induced by maternal feed intake restriction at different time at morphological, physiological and molecular levels. It will be helpful to reduce the programming of fetal skeleton induced by maternal nutrients deficiency in goats and other ruminants, and to provide guidance strategies for nutrition manipulation at different gestation stages.