Metabolic characteristics of poultry eggs from five species: insights from metabolomics, network analysis, and...

Poultry eggs are recognized as a rich source of essential nutrients for humans. To optimize production, develop high-value-added products, and better understand interspecies differences, we investigated the metabolic profiles of chicken, duck, goose, quail, and pigeon eggs (yolk and albumen (egg white)). Using non-targeted metabolomics integrated with multivariate analyses and machine learning-based biomarker screening, we identified 519 and 312 significantly different metabolites in the yolk and white of eggs from the aforementioned species, respectively. These metabolites included lipids and lipid-like molecules, organoheterocyclic compounds, benzenoids, etc. The co-occurrence network showed that the egg yolks had higher modularity than the egg whites. ABC transporters and amino acid metabolism-related pathways were the main enriched pathways, reflecting species-adaptive strategies. Moreover, feature selection assisted by machine learning identified 9 candidate biomarkers with potential discriminatory value for poultry egg species classification, although further targeted validation using independent external cohorts is required. This study provides insights into the metabolomics profiles of poultry eggs and their industrial applications.