Effects of dietary ferulic acid supplementation on growth performance and skeletal muscle fiber type conversion in weaned piglets

Abstract BACKGROUND Ferulic acid (FA) is a common polyphenolic compound. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of dietary FA supplementation on growth performance and muscle fiber type conversion in weaned piglets. In this study, eighteen 21‐day‐old DLY (Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire) weaned piglets were randomly divided into control, 0.05% FA, and 0.45% FA groups. RESULTS Our study showed that dietary FA supplementation had no effect on growth performance, but it could upregulate the expression of slow myosin heavy chain (MyHC) protein, increase the activities of succinic dehydrogenase and malate dehydrogenase, and downregulate the expression of fast MyHC protein. Dietary FA supplementation also increased the expression levels of phosphorylated AMP‐activated protein kinase, sirtuin 1 (Sirt1), peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor gamma coactivator 1‐alpha (PGC‐1 α ), myocyte enhancer factor 2C, and troponin I‐SS, increased the proportion of slow‐twitch fiber, and decreased the proportion of fast‐twitch fiber. In addition, our results showed that dietary FA supplementation increased the messenger RNA abundance of mitochondrial nuclear transcription genes, including ATP synthase membrane subunit c locus 1, cytochrome oxidase subunit 1, nuclear respiratory factor 1, mitochondrial transcription factor A, mitochondrial transcription factor B1, and cytochrome c. CONCLUSION We provided the first evidence that FA could promote muscle fiber type conversion from fast‐twitch to slow‐twitch via the Sirt1/AMP‐activated protein kinase/PGC‐1 α signaling pathway and could improve the mitochondrial function in weaned piglets. This means that FA can be used as a dietary supplement to improve the quality of pork. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry