Progress 09/01/24 to 08/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period, the project successfully engaged multiple target audiences across academic, industry, and institutional sectors. Notably, this semester marked the inaugural offering of the Introduction to Animal Health course, designed for upper-level undergraduates. Approximately 25 junior- and senior-level students attended regularly. The course was tailored for students preparing for professional or graduate programs and emphasized high-level concepts in animal health. The scientific community and industry professionals were also key audiences. Finally, a substantial audience was reached within Virginia Tech and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, including undergraduates, graduate and professional students, and principal investigators. This diverse academic community continues to serve as an important base for disseminating research findings and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. Changes/Problems:My plan was to present this past year in Chicago at CRWAD however, due to weather and travel arrangements, I was unable to attend so I will attend another conference this next reporting cycle. For the second part of the project, we are choosing to foucs on lipid supplementation in rations instead of branched chain amino acids because data from this current study suggest this situation may be more fruitful. However, as mentioned this study is on the ground running and the pigs are doing very well. This will not change the overall goal of the project and should even help the study bring positive data to the industry. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?I have had several excellent opportunities to learn and grow in my education and skills to become a tenure-track faculty member. First, I was able to have a consistent role in the classroom giving lectures and designing projects for students. Interaction with this group of individuals was fantastic and I learned several teaching skills/philosophies from this activity. Further, I learned about the time commitment that is required to handle a 3 credit hour class. While not a majority of my time by any means, it was definitely not an insignificant amount of time to prepare, lecture, and grade tests. Learning experiences on the research side have been just as, if not more, fruitful than the teaching experience. My time in Dr. Najt's nutritional biochemistry labratory has culminated in learning several new techniques for isolating, processing, and testing mitochondria from several different fractions within the cell. Not only will this work be extremely useful in my future career, it is translating to publications in an area I had no formal training on (healthy aging) until my postdoctoral position started. Live tissue assays such as respirometry, hepatic perfusions, and fatty acid labelling have been central to my training in the Najt Laboratory. I have also learned several wet lab techniques that will give me a competitive edge for building programs such as proteomic and lipidomic data cultivation and analysis. Working with stable isotope tracers in vivo (a large component of this project) has allowed me to hone my skills as well as study a whole new area of intermediary metabolism for me, mainly amino acids. This fellowship has afforded me several opportunities thus far and there are many more to come during the second half of the project. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Once data from this study is in publishable form, abstracts will be sent to CRWAD and Animal Science. Currently, this data has been presented in several lab meetings and departmental seminars for feedback and additional measurement suggestions. These results have also been discussed with mentors and collaborators from other universities for alternative viewpoints. The second year of this fellowship is expected to have several first-author publications and abstracts of outlined research projects. The first reporting period was used largely to complete animal and labwork, which was accomplished, and begin writing manuscripts. We are well on track to meet all expected goals set previously. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Several of the reported milestones from this study have been completed. There is one measurement left that will make up it's own figure then all the data is collected for this project. In addition, live animal work on the next step of this project, feed interventions, is already over halfway through (Goal 1). The second study labwork is more straightforward as a large proportion will be growth and ex vivo measurment data. In order to complete these studies, I will be completely finished with labwork from both studies by November of this year (Goal 2). This is perfect timing for the two conferences I plan to present in January and March. Following wetlab work, data analysis and manuscript preparation will following with an intent to publish early in 2026. Following the publication of these 2 manuscripts, I will began to move toward writing a review article in the area in which these studies belong (Goal 3). Given the successful first half of this project, the second half will be very prolific and rewarding. In addition to tangible milestones that were set at the beginning of this finding period, this fellowship has provided exceptional preliminary data that will kick-start a successful program in swine health and nutrition. These future study ideas are perhaps more valuable at this point in a young career than the publications that will result from this work. This is obviously a huge statement as papers and productivity are essential during this part of my career

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The live animal and viral components of this study have been completed. This has resulted in several organs being harvested for analysis. All viseral organs and several individual muscles were collected from this study. A significant proportion of the data has been collected, analyzed and made into figures. We have begun to highlight some of the key metabolic pathways that are altered during a disease challenge apart from lack of feed intake in pigs. In doing so, we are able to take aim at specific amino acids to be used for supplementation in rations. To determine which amino acids are limited for optimal lean tissue accretion, we first need to determine what is not being used for lean tissue accretion in the body. These questions can be answered with samples or data that has already been collected. Further, we need to push into exploration of fatty acids as constructive feed additives to swine diets during a challenge. This will be the second half of this project. However, there is signifciant progress that has been made with this project to the point where it could be published as is. There are still two measurements I would like to complete in all tissues to make this project as impactful as possible. All the tissues have already been ground for this analysis. We are simply waiting for the GCMS to be open to run these samples.

Publications

• Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2024 Citation: Hepatic lipid metabolism in neonatal pigs