Dietary Linoleate and Methionine in Chicks

RECENT studies in chicks showed a profound influence of dietary methionine on serum cholesterol levels (Hill, 1966a) and suggested that dietary methionine might well influence other aspects of lipid metabolism. Inasmuch as studies of the requirement of the chick for dietary linoleate were underway in our laboratory (Hill, 1966b), an experiment was designed to study the effect of dietary methionine upon the EFA requirement, and to determine whether there is any interaction between dietary methionine and dietary linoleate. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Male New Hampshire Columbian Rock crossbred chicks3 were started in an electrically-heated battery brooder and fed water and the basal diet (with 5% hydrogenated coconut oil) for seven days. This seven day depletion period was used to lower the linoleate content of tissue lipids, because it has been shown that yolk lipids of incubated eggs contain appreciable amounts of linoleate and arachidonate at hatching time (Hill et al., 1965). At …