{"id":"ifip_49596","title":"Metabolic prediction of maturity at birth in pigs","year":2026,"publisher":"IFIP","excerpt":"Improving piglet survival is a key objective for breeders. Piglets that have not yet fully developed are more likely to die\nprematurely. Here, focus was to better characterize maturity at birth. Very immature piglets exhibit a distinctive head\nmorphology with a reminiscent of a dolphin’s, with promi…","url":"https://rd-agri.fr/detail/DOCUMENT/ifip_49596","links":{"self":"/rd-agri/documents/ifip_49596"},"description":"Improving piglet survival is a key objective for breeders. Piglets that have not yet fully developed are more likely to die\nprematurely. Here, focus was to better characterize maturity at birth. Very immature piglets exhibit a distinctive head\nmorphology with a reminiscent of a dolphin’s, with prominent eyes. This study proposed integrating phenotyping data with\nblood sampling to develop a predictive metabolic signature of piglet maturity at birth.\nFollowing analysis of the head morphology, the study categorized 278 newborns (99 Landrace, 87 Large White, 92 LR×LW)\naccording to their maturity level. Furthermore, a metabolomic analysis was also performed by 1H-NMR on blood samples\n(serum) collected on piglets in the hours following birth. The raw spectra were analyzed using the R package ASICS. The\nfollowing statistics were based on 55 metabolites with non-zero variance. A subset of 14 metabolites was selected to develop\na predictive model based on random Forests and GLM methods. The two models accurately predict 100% of the severe\nimmaturity status in both the training and test samples. Some piglets that are morphologically classified as mature may be\nmetabolically immature. The 14-metabolite signature can qualify the maturity with a qualitative score as mature or not, and two\nquantitative scores, a mean predicted value and a stability of the prediction, which allow the confidence of the prediction to be\nassessed. The predictive model was applied to an independent dataset of blood collected on different farms and from piglets of\ndifferent genetic origins. This allowed the relevance of the model to be evaluated, taking into account other phenotypes related\nto the status of birth piglets, such as birth weight, and body mass index.\nGenetic selection for survival at birth and growth is primarily based on the measurement of birth weight. As these traits are correlated, it is important to unravel these correlations to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms. The identification of a molecular signature could facilitate future experiments aimed at deciphering the genetic architecture of complex traits, such as maturity. Therefore, we have developed a minimally invasive blood sample that allows for low-cost, user-friendly metabolic analysis of serum. While maturity is typically defined at the biometric level, we propose a novel approach to define this complex trait at the metabolic level\n\n\n\n\nArticle en accès ouvert disponible ici (s’ouvre dans le site de l’éditeur)","language":"eng","keywords":[],"project":{"code":"19ART382455","name":"Développement d’un outil de phénotypage haut-débit de la maturité du porcelet"},"notice-url":"https://ifip.asso.fr/documentation/49596-Metabolic-prediction-of-maturity-at-birth-in-pigs","document-url":"https://docs.ifip.asso.fr/default/digitalCollection/DigitalCollectionAttachmentDownloadHandler.ashx?parentDocumentId=49596&documentId=49597&skipWatermark=true&skipCopyright=true","productions":[],"taxa":[],"production-systems":[],"areas":[],"pests":[]}