ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1564592
This article is part of the Research TopicNatural Compounds/Products and Livestock Productivity: Enhancing Antioxidant Levels, Gut Health, Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Disease ControlView all 35 articles
Effects of folic acid on body folate status, ovarian function and organ indexes of offspring during embryonic stage
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Life Science and Engineering, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China
- 2Shanxi Dayu Bioengineering Co., Ltd., Yuncheng, Shanxi, China
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This experiment aimed to investigate the effect of dietary folic acid supplementation on the folic acid status and ovarian function of female broiler breeders. In this experiment, 50 30-week-old Arbor Acres female broiler breeders were assigned 2 treatments with 5 pens per treatment and 5 female broiler breeders per pen after two weeks of pre-feeding, namely the control group (Con: supplementation 0 mg/kg folic acid) and the folic acid group (FA: supplementation 4 mg/kg folic acid), and the treatment time was 16 weeks. The folic acid content of eggs, female broiler breeders, and offspring one-day-old plasma, and the expression of folic acid transporter in the ovary, liver, duodenum, and jejunum of female broiler breeders were determined. Ovaries were subjected to transcriptome analysis. The results showed that folic acid supplementation significantly increased folic acid deposition in eggs (P < 0.05) and one-day-old offspring plasma (P < 0.01). There was no significant effect on the organ indexes of offspring at the embryonic stage (P > 0.05). Folic acid supplementation significantly decreased the proton-coupled folate transporter (PCFT), reduced folate transporter (RFC) and folate receptors (FR) in the ovary, liver, and jejunum (P < 0.01) mRNA expression, but significantly increased RFC mRNA expression in the duodenum (P < 0.05). Three hundred twenty-six differentially expressed genes were identified in the ovary transcriptome of the breeder hens in the Con group and the FA group, of which 217 were significantly up-regulated and 109 were down-regulated considerably (P < 0.05). KEGG analysis of differential genes significantly enriched 10 differential metabolic pathways, among which up-regulated differential genes are involved in cell cycle, Wnt signaling pathway and steroid biosynthesis signal path. Folic acid can increase the expression of genes related to ovarian reproductive function and improve the plasma folic acid content eggs and offspring.
Keywords: Folic Acid, Female broiler breeder, Folic acid transporter, offspring, Ovarian function
Received: 21 Jan 2025; Accepted: 20 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Lu, Wu and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jianfei Zhao, School of Life Science and Engineering, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, China
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