Authors : A. Corzo , M. T. Kidd and S. C. Burgess
Abstract: Little research has focused on biotechnology for animal nutrition. We wanted to investigate the possibility of simplifying a modern biotechnology for practical application to broiler research. A study was conducted to evaluate plasma protein status as affected by dietary lysine using Matrix-assisted-laser-desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Broiler chicks were fed either a diet deficient (1.00%) or adequate (1.22%) in lysine from 0 to 17 d of age. Body weight was determined at 17 d of age. Upon validation of different growth conditions, blood sample representative from each experimental unit was taken and pooled by treatment. Blood plasma was then submitted to MALDI-TOF MS analyses. Resultant spectra, representative of the smallest-mass subset (<25 kDa) of the proteins in each sample was collected. Despite the limited mass range, the data sets were extremely complex; each set of data had almost a quarter of a million datapoints per sample. Plasma from the chicks fed the lysine adequate diet appeared to have a higher number of highly stringent and differentially expressed protein peaks when compared to the underfed lysine chicks. There appears to be a tendency for increased variability as proteins of higher nominal mass are expressed in MALDI-TOF MS, based on calculation of coefficient of variation (CV). However, such CV is not surprising to any equipment or laboratory assay, and appears to be of low impact to this procedure (<0.1% CV). Results from this study exemplify the feasibility of MALDI-TOF MS for biomarker identification of nutritional status.
A. Corzo , M. T. Kidd and S. C. Burgess , 2004. Whole-plasma Maldi-tof Proteomics for Identification of Biomarkers of Nutritional Status in the Chicken . Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, 3: 517-521.