Integrative transcriptomics and metabolomics analyses reveal changes in meat quality and muscle lipid metabolism in sheep supplemented with rumen-protected glucose

The effects of dietary rumen-protected glucose (RPG) supplementation on Dumengsa sheep growth performance, meat quality, and transcriptomic and metabolomic profiling are reported. Twelve sheep were randomly assigned to a control (basal diet, n = 6) or RPG (basal diet +1.0% RPG, n = 6) group for 100 d. RPG increased serum malondialdehyde (P = 0.015) and cholesterol (P = 0.046) concentrations, enhanced intramuscular fat content (P = 0.016), and tended to produce lower meat lightness (P = 0.072), redness (P = 0.053), and hue angle (P = 0.072) values. In total, 319 differentially expressed genes and 30 differentially abundant metabolites were identified. Transcriptomic analysis revealed RPG to alter the expression of genes related to oxidative phosphorylation, β-oxidation, and fat deposition. Metabolomic analysis revealed that RPG supplementation primarily increases the abundance of short-chain fatty acids. Integrated analysis using a Data Integration Analysis for Biomarker discovery using Latent Components (DIABLO) model revealed a strong and significant correlation (r = 0.93) between omics profiles. We report dietary supplementation with 1% RPG to modulate muscle lipid metabolism and potentially stimulate intramuscular fat deposition, but also to possibly induce a state of potential oxidative stress.