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Published on: May 15, 2019
Multi-Tissue Metabolomics Reveals Metabolic Signatures Associated with Lipid Partitioning Between Abdominal Fat and
Wenxin Zhang1,2,3, Ronglang Cai1,2,3, Fangren Lan1,2,3
1State Key Laboratory of Animal Biotech Breeding, Frontier Science Center of Molecular Design Breeding, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China.
Abstract:
Fat deposition in laying hens involves lipid synthesis, transport, storage, and allocation across multiple tissues, yet the metabolic links between abdominal fat (AF) and egg yolk (EY) lipid deposition remain unclear. Here, we integrated whole-genome resequencing data with untargeted metabolomic profiles from the liver, duodenum, ileum, cecum, and serum of 248 purebred Rhode Island Red hens at 100 weeks of age. We estimated metabolite-explained variance (me2) for 22 fat deposition-related traits, evaluated metabolite heritability, and combined Spearman correlation analysis with bidirectional generalized summary-data-based Mendelian randomization (GSMR) to identify shared metabolites and pathways associated with AF and EY traits. The me2 showed clear tissue specificity, with the liver, serum, and duodenum showing significant explanatory signals for 77.3% (17/22), 72.7% (16/22), and 68.2% (15/22) of fat-related traits. Liver-, AF-, and body weight-related traits showed stronger metabolomic explanatory signals, with significant proportions of 71.4-100.0%, 28.6-100.0%, and 100.0% across tissues, respectively, whereas EY-related traits showed more restricted and tissue-specific associations (0-33.3%). Correlation analysis identified liver-enriched AF-EY shared metabolites (e.g., NADPH, cholesteryl sulfate, N6,N6,N6-trimethyllysine), most of which showed opposite association patterns between AF- and EY-related traits. Bidirectional GSMR prioritized 20 candidate metabolites with opposite putative effects on AF and EY traits, including CDP-choline, phosphorylcholine, and allantoin. Pathway integration highlighted fructose/mannose metabolism, glycerophospholipid metabolism, ABC transporters, folate/one-carbon metabolism, amino acid metabolism, and energy metabolism as core components of the AF-EY shared network. These findings reveal tissue-specific and shared metabolic bases of fat deposition and identify candidate metabolic signatures associated with lipid partitioning between abdominal fat and egg yolk in laying hens.
