Bioscientifica Proceedings

Among livestock species, swine exhibit the most severe naturally-occurring intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) primarily due to a reduction in net protein synthesis. Thus, new knowledge about fetal metabolism of amino acids (AA), which are building blocks for proteins and regulators of intracellular protein turnover, can provide a solution to this problem. Among all AA, requirements of glutamate and glutamine by fetal pigs are quantitatively the highest, but cannot b...