Impact of varying soybean oil concentrations on the cytokine profile of skeletal muscle and liver of pigs: a systems biology approach

Abstract

Lipids are important for metabolic processes, mainly cytokine regulation in the skeletal muscle and liver. Considering the soybean oil concentration, a weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to perform an integrative analysis in skeletal muscle and liver tissues. Using this approach, this research aimed to investigate the integrative response to soybean oil supplementation in two different tissues to discover molecular responses, especially inflammatory responses. For this integrative analysis, sample collection, RNA sequencing, and WGCNA were carried out on immunocastrated male Large White pigs supplemented with 1.5% or 3.0% soybean oil. Co-expression of some genes was revealed, such as those related to lipid metabolism and phosphotransferase activities in the skeletal muscle, or oxidative stress and methylation in the liver. Thus, we demonstrated that soybean oil supplementation leads to responses in skeletal muscle and liver, revealing that this supplementation improves the metabolism and inflammatory responses of healthy pigs.