Roles of selected nutrients in development of the porcine conceptus during pregnancy

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Conceptus development in mammals depends on an intra-uterine environment filled with histotroph that includes molecules that are secreted by uterine epithelia and/or selectively transported into the uterine lumen.In pigs, total recoverable glucose, fructose, arginine, leucine and glutamine increase in histotroph with advancing days of the peri-implantation period of pregnancy and in allantoic fluid later in gestation.During pregnancy, the uterine luminal epithelium (LE) and trophectoderm of conceptuses each express specific transporters for glucose.The most abundantly expressed amino acid transporters in uterine LE and trophectoderm are those for glutamate, neutral amino acids and cationic amino acids.These nutrient transporters are also expressed in uterine epithelia and placental tissues of pigs throughout gestation and expression of transporters and accumulation of nutrients in the uterine lumen is affected by progesterone and estradiol.Treatment of porcine trophectoderm cells with glucose, arginine and leucine stimulates the mechanistic target of rapamycin nutrient sensing cell signaling pathway to increase phosphorylation of RPS6K, RPS6 and EIF4EBP1 in the nucleus or cytoplasm to stimulate proliferation, mRNA translation and protein synthesis.Glucose and fructose are equivalent in stimulating proliferation of pig trophectoderm cells and in inducing synthesis of hyaluraonic acid via the hexosamine pathway.The results of our research indicate mechanisms whereby select nutrients act differentially to affect translation of mRNAs for cell signaling molecules that affect conceptus growth, development, and survival during pregnancy in pigs.Composition of uterine flushings from Large White and prolific Chinese Meishan gilts.