Effect of Dietary L-Carnitine Supplementation on Growth, Serum Biochemical Indices, Oxidative and Growth-Related Gene Expressions in Chinese Soft-Shelled Turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis)
Effect of Dietary L-Carnitine Supplementation on Growth, Serum Biochemical Indices, Oxidative and Growth-Related Gene Expressions in Chinese Soft-Shelled Turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis)
Xing Lu1, Mahmoud A.O. Dawood2, Fan Wu1, Hua Wen1, Wei Liu1, Juan Tian1, Ming Jiang1, Li-Juan Yu1, Xiang Li3, Ning Xu3 and Hong-Wei Liang1*
ABSTRACT
This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary L-carnitine supplementation in Chinese soft-shelled turtle, Pelodiscus sinensis. Four experimental diets were formulated with the addition of L-carnitine at the levels of 0 (control), 100, 200 and 400 mg kg-1. Each diet was fed to triplicate groups of turtles with initial average weight (394.4 ± 3.8 g) for 8 weeks. Our results showed that the weight gain rate (WGR), specific growth rate (SGR) and feed efficiency (FE) of Chinese soft-shelled turtles increased linearly with increasing dietary L-carnitine levels from 0 to 200 mg kg-1, but declined slightly with the L-carnitine supplementation at 400 mg kg-1. Muscle protein content was significantly increased when turtles were fed diets with 200 or 400 mg kg-1 L-carnitine (P < 0.05). The serum biochemical indices analysis revealed that dietary L-carnitine at 400 mg kg-1 had markedly reduced triglyceride (TG) concentration (P < 0.05). The elevated expression of hepatic igf1 gene at the transcriptional level was positively correlated with dietary L-carnitine levels on the growth performance of Chinese soft-shelled turtle. Furthermore, dietary L-carnitine supplementation significantly up-regulated the mRNA levels of superoxide dismutase 1 (sod1) and lipoprotein lipase (lpl) genes in the liver of Chinese soft-shelled turtle (P < 0.05). All the above results indicated that appropriate dietary L-carnitine supplementation could improve growth performance, increase muscle protein content, reduce serum TG concentration, and induce the antioxidant- and lipometabolism-associated genes expression in Chinese soft-shelled turtle.
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