Maternal Nutrition and Offspring Programming: Impact on Animal Production and Performance
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Nutrition".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2022) | Viewed by 8876
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The fetal period is very important for the development of animals, because all organs and tissues are rapidly formed and developed at this stage, undergoing further growth and maturation after birth. Developing tissues and organs are most sensitive to changes in the external environment, including maternal malnutrition, which leads to poor embryonic development and limits the long-term growth performance of animals. In the early embryonic stage, both muscle cells and fat cells are developed from the mesoderm, and their common origin provides an opportunity to strengthen muscle growth instead of adipogenic differentiation, thereby enhancing the lean/fat ratio of offspring. The initial formation of muscle fibers begins at the embryonic stage and continues to the fetal stage, and then muscle growth is mainly characterized by the hypertrophy of existing muscle fibers, in which muscle satellite cells play a key role. Therefore, increasing the number of muscle fibers and satellite cell density are two key control points for promoting muscle development and enhancing lean/fat ratio. The development of fat occurs slightly later than muscle fibers during fetal development; compared to other fat depots, intramuscular adipocyte formation occurs later and continues to around weaning, which provides an opportunity to specifically promote the development of intramuscular adipocytes and marbling fat accumulation. Understanding of mechanisms linking maternal nutrition to fetal development and offspring growth performance allows us to precisely manage animals to enhance production efficiency and quality. In this issue, a number of prominent researchers working on fetal developmental programming contribute research or review articles, with the objective to provide current status and updates in fetal programming research in livestock production.
Prof. Dr. Min Du
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- gestation
- meat
- fetal programming
- animal production
- nutrition
- quality
