Mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling for identification of biomarkers related to footpad dermatitis in ducks

ABSTRACT

1. A new assessment method for duck footpad dermatitis (FPD) evaluation was developed, combining visual and histological characters using the images and sections of 400 ducks’ feet at 340 d of age. All ducks were graded as G0 (healthy), G1 (mild), G2 (moderate) and G3 (severe) according to the degree of FPD.

2. To reveal the potential biomarkers in serum related to duck FPD, non-targeted metabolomics and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis were used to explore differential metabolites in each group.

3. There were 57, 91 and 210 annotated differential metabolites in groups G1, G2 and G3 compared with G0, which meant that the severity of FPD increased in line with the number of metabolites. Four metabolites, L-phenylalanine, L-arginine, L-leucine and L-lysine, were considered potential biomarkers related to FPD.

4. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that the FPD was mainly involved in glycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, the pentose phosphate pathway and amino acid metabolism. These are related to production metabolism and can affect the physiological activities of ducks, which might explain the decrease in production performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Duck
• inflammation
• serum
• metabolomics
• potential biomarkers

Acknowledgments

Conceptualisation, Liu and Tang; methodology, Yan; software, Liu; validation, Wang and Bo Hu; formal analysis, Yan and Wei; investigation, Wang and Han; resources, Jiwei Hu; data curation, Liu; writing—original draft preparation, review and editing, Liu and Tang; visualization, Junpeng Li and Qi; supervision, Wang; project administration, Liu and Li; funding acquisition, Liu and Li.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00071668.2023.2214884.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Agricultural Research System [CARS-42-4], the Key Technology Support Program of Sichuan Province [2021YFYZ0014] and the Key R&D project of the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province [2020YFN0084].