Protective effects of taurine against muscle damage induced by diquat in 35 days weaned piglets

Background: Oxidative stress is a key factor that influences piglets' health. Taurine plays an imperative role in keeping the biological system from damage. This study was conducted to investigate the protective effect of taurine against muscle injury due to the secondary effect of diquat toxicity.Results: Our study found that taurine effectively and dose-dependently alleviated the diquat toxicity induced rise of feed/gain, with a concurrent improvement of carcass lean percentage. The plasma content of taurine was considerably increased in a dose-dependent manner. Consequently, dietary taurine efficiently improved the activity of plasma antioxidant enzymes. Furthermore, taurine attenuated muscle damage by restoring mitochondrial micromorphology, suppressing protein degradation and reducing the percentage of apoptotic cells in the skeletal muscle. Taurine supplementation also suppressed the genes expression levels of the antioxidant-, mitochondrial biogenesis-, and muscle atrophy-related genes in the skeletal muscle of piglets with oxidative stress.Conclusions: These results showed that the dose of 0.60% taurine supplementation in the diet could attenuate skeletal muscle injury induced by diquat toxicity. It is suggested that taurine could be a potential nutritional intervention strategy to improve growth performance.

Three-dimensional structure of axonal mitochondria reflects the age of drosophila

This study aimed to reconstruct a three-dimensional map of axonal mitochondria using Fiji and Neurolucida software, and to observe directly the morphology and distribution of mitochondria in axons of motor neurons in dorsal longitudinal flight muscles of drosophila aged 5 days and 20 days, using electron microscopy. Results indicated that there was no difference in the total area and volume of mitochondria between 5-day-old drosophila and 20-day-old drosophila in all sections, but the ratio of mitochondrial total areas to axon total areas, as well as mitochondrial density of 20-day-old drosophila, was lower than that of 5-day-old drosophila. The number of mitochondria, whose volume was less than 1 000 000 IJm3, and between 1 000 000 pm3 and 10 000 000 pm3, was higher in 20-day-old drosophila than that in 5-day-old drosophila. The number of mitochondria with a volume between 1 000 000 pm3 and 100 000 000 IJm3 was apparently higher than those with a volume less than 1 000 000 t.lm3 or larger than 100 000 000 IJm3. In addition, the number of mitochondria with a volume more than 100 000 000 tJm3 was small; however, the volume was nearly 70% of the total volume in both 5-day-old and 20-day-old drosophila. In contrast, the number of mitochondria with a volume between 1 000 000 t.Jm3 and 10 000 000 IJm3 was large, but the volume was less than 30% of the total volume. These experimental findings suggest that changes in mitochondrial morphology and number in motor neurons from the dorsal longitudinal muscle of drosophila are present during different ages.