Papers of the Week

Some naturalphytogenic feed additives, which contain several active compounds, have been shown to be effective alternatives to traditional antibiotics. () is a whole grass in the family Loganiaceae. It is a known toxic plant widely distributed in China and has been used as a traditional Chinese herbal medicine for many years to treat neuropathic pain, rheumatoid pain, inflammation, skin ulcers, and cancer. However, not only is nontoxic to animals such as pigs and sheep but also has an obvious growth-promoting effect. To our knowledge, the internal mechanism of the influence of on the animal body is still unclear. The goal of this work is to evaluate the metabolic consequences of feeding piglets for 45 days based on the combination of transcriptomics and metabolomics. According to growth measurement and evaluation, compared with piglets fed a complete diet, adding 20 g/kg powder to the basal diet of piglets significantly reduced the feed conversion ratio. Results of the liver transcriptome suggest that glycine and cysteine-related regulatory pathways, including the MAPK signaling pathway and the mTOR signaling pathway, were extensively altered in -induced piglets. Plasma metabolomics identified 21 and 18 differential metabolites ( < 0.05) in the plasma of piglets in the positive and negative ion modes, respectively, between exposure and complete diet groups. The concentrations of glycine and its derivatives and N-acetylcysteine were higher in the exposure group than in the complete diet group.This study demonstrated that could be an alternative to antibiotics that improves the immune function of piglets, and the latent mechanism of may be related to various signaling pathways, including the MAPK signaling pathway and the PPAR signaling pathway.