Affiliation: | (1) Biochemistry Department, AFRC Institute of Animal Physiology (now The Babraham Institute), Cambridge, CB2 4AT, UK;(2) Present address: Division of Nutritional Sciences, School of Biosciences, Sutton Bonington Campus, Loughborough, University of Nottingham, , LE12 5RD, UK;(3) MRC Centre for Protein Engineering, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, UK;(4) Present address: Department of Anatomy, University of Adelaide, SA, , 5000, Australia;(5) CSIRO Division of Animal Production (now CSIRO Livestock Industries), Blacktown, NSW, 2148, Australia;(6) Present address: School of Biological Sciences A08, University of Sydney, NSW, , 2006, Australia |
Abstract: | Pregnant ewes with catheters implanted in an artery and the uterine and recurrent tarsal veins were infused at a constant rate with U−14C-labelled glucose, alanine or bicarbonate. Measurements were made of the overall and local fractional contribution of glucose and alanine to CO2 production and of the extent of interconversion of these metabolites. In the whole animal, by coupling the results with the authors’ previous study of lactate metabolism, a solution was obtained to an open unrestricted 4-compartment model of the exchange of carbon between glucose, lactate, alanine and CO2. A more limited study was made with non-pregnant sheep because complete data for lactate interactions with alanine were not available. Our analysis of glucose/lactate/alanine/CO2 interactions in pregnant sheep suggests that about two-thirds of the glycogenic carbon was oxidised fairly directly to CO2. There was relatively little recycling of glucose carbon through lactate and alanine so that most of the remaining glycogenic carbon was stored as product with relatively long turnover time. It is possible that much of this was in the form of muscle glycogen, and analysis of glycogenic carbon exchange across the hind limb muscle was consistent with this conclusion. In non-pregnant ewes, the findings, although incomplete, suggested that there were no great differences from the findings in pregnant ewes. |