Effect of insect meal as an alternative protein source on the metabolism of growing pigs

在不久的将来，富含蛋白质的昆虫粉可能成为动物营养中的替代和可持续的蛋白质来源，前提是法律障碍将被克服，与使用经典蛋白质来源相比，动物的生产性能不会受到损害，并且可以排除任何安全问题。虽然几项研究表明，昆虫粉可以在不影响动物S生产性能的情况下用于肉鸡的日粮喂养，但在猪身上的现有研究还不够。此外，昆虫粉对家畜新陈代谢和健康的潜在影响是完全未知的。自己对遗传性肥胖大鼠的初步研究表明，昆虫粉对脂肪代谢有好处。此外，从这些自己的研究中观察到，昆虫粉对其他代谢途径有很强的影响，如参与氨基酸和外源物质的代谢以及细胞应激反应，总体上表明昆虫粉对动物S新陈代谢的影响是全面和复杂的。虽然这些结果不能直接转移到农场动物身上，但考虑到在肥胖大鼠身上观察到的大量变化，昆虫粉很可能也会影响农场动物的新陈代谢。在此背景下，该项目旨在阐明昆虫粉作为一种替代蛋白质来源对生长猪代谢的影响。该项目的主要假设是用虫粉替代大豆提取粉影响生长猪的新陈代谢。为了验证这一假设，将对断奶仔猪进行5周的饲喂试验，在等蛋白饲料中，用虫粉完全(100%)或部分(50%)替代大豆提取粉。由于无法预测虫粉对新陈代谢的影响类型，必须确定虫粉对新陈代谢的潜在有益和有害影响，因此将应用转录组学、代谢组学和脂类组学等组学技术。此外，还将进行基于盲肠食糜微生物群落16S rRNA基因扩增高通量测序的微生物组分析和盲肠食糜微生物代谢产物的分析。除了关于昆虫粉作为猪营养蛋白质来源的潜力的重要发现外，该项目还有望提供关于昆虫粉在人类营养中的使用和安全方面的重要发现，因为众所周知，猪是适合人类的模型。

Protein-rich insect meals might be alternative and sustainable protein sources in animal nutrition in the near future, provided that legal obstacles will be overcome, animals´ performance is not impaired in comparison to the use of classical protein sources and any safety issues can be excluded. While several studies demonstrated that insect meal can be used in feeding rations for broilers without impairing animal´s performance, available studies in pigs are insufficient. In addition, potential effects of insect meal on metabolism and health of farm animals are completely unknown. Own preliminary work with genetically obese rats shows that insect meal has beneficial effects on lipid metabolism. Moreover, observations from these own studies demonstrate strong effects of insect meal on other metabolic pathways, such as involved in metabolism of amino acids and xenobiotics and cellular stress response, overall indicating a comprehensive and complex influence on animal´s metabolism by insect meal. Although these results cannot be directly transferred to the situation in farm animals, it is likely that insect meal also influences the metabolism of farm animals considering the abundance of changes observed in obese rats. Against this background the project aims to elucidate the effects of insect meal as an alternative protein source on the metabolism of growing pigs. The main hypothesis of this project is that replacement of soybean extraction meal by insect meal influences the metabolism of growing pigs. To test this hypothesis, a 5 week feeding trial with weaned piglets will be carried out in which soybean extraction meal is replaced either completely (100%) or partially (50%) with insect meal in isoproteinogenic feeding rations. Since the type of influence of insect meal on metabolism cannot be predicted and both, potentially beneficial and detrimental effects of insect meal on metabolism shall be identified, omics-techniques such as transcriptomics, metabolomics and lipidomics will be applied. In addition, microbiome analysis based on high-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons of microbial community obtained from caecal chyme and analysis of microbial metabolites in caecal chyme will be performed. Besides important findings regarding the potential of insect meal as a protein source in pig nutrition, the project is also expected to provide important findings with regard to the use and safety aspects of insect meal in human nutrition, because the pig is known to be suitable model for the human.