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Use of homoarginine for measuring true ileal digestibility of amino acids in food protein

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Abstract

A useful application of homoarginine in animal nutrition is the determination of the true ileal digestibility (TID) of amino acids (AA) in swine complete diets and feed ingredients. The homoarginine method involves the conversion of dietary lysine to homoarginine in a guanidination reaction with methylisourea. Accurate determination of TID of AA, especially in heat-treated feed ingredients, is a key prerequisite for accurate diet formulation with respect to the provision of dietary AA. Thus, the aim of this review is to highlight the homoarginine methodology and its application in animal nutrition. Based on the data from published studies, the homoarginine method can be used to accurately determine the digestibility of lysine and the majority of other acid-stable AA in complete diets and feed ingredients fed to animals.

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Abbreviations

AA:

Amino acids

AID:

Apparent ileal AA digestibility

TID:

True ileal digestibilities

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31330075; 31110103909, 31272217, 31272450, 31101729, 31201813 and 31272451), National Science and Technology Support Program (2012BAD39B03), Scientific Research Program of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (D20141701), the Hubei Hundred Talent program, The Chinese Academy of Science STS Project (KFJ-EW-STS-063), and a Hatch project from Texas A&M AgriLife Research (H-8200).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Informed consent

No human or animal experiments were required by any of the authors in order to write this review article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scientific Observing and Experimental Station of Animal Nutrition and Feed Science in South-Central, Ministry of Agriculture, Hunan Provincial Engineering Research Center of Healthy Livestock, Key Laboratory of Agro-ecological Processes in Subtropical Region, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, 410125, China

    Jie Yin, Wenkai Ren, Miaomiao Wu, Hao Xiao, Jielin Duan, Tiejun Li & Yulong Yin

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China

    Jie Yin & Wenkai Ren

  3. Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Animal Nutrition and Feed Safety, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan, 430023, China

    Yongqing Hou, Yulong Yin & Guoyao Wu

  4. Department of Animal Science, University of Hunan Agriculture, Changsha, 410128, China

    Yurong Zhao

  5. Department of Animal Science, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Guoyao Wu

  6. Department of Animal Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MBR3T 2N2, Canada

    C. M. Nyachoti

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  1. Jie Yin
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  2. Wenkai Ren
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  9. Yulong Yin
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Correspondence to Yulong Yin.

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Yin, J., Ren, W., Hou, Y. et al. Use of homoarginine for measuring true ileal digestibility of amino acids in food protein. Amino Acids 47, 1795–1803 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-015-1958-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-015-1958-5

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