Maternal dietary linoleic acid supplementation promotes muscle fibre type transformation in suckling piglets

As meat quality is basically dependent on muscle fibre characteristics, it is important to know how muscle fibres are regulated and transformed. This study aimed to investigate the effect of maternal dietary supplementation on muscle fibre types using 3% saturated fatty acid (palmitic acid, PA) or 3% unsaturated fatty acid (linoleic acid, LA) from 80 days of gestation to the weaning of offspring (25 days post‐natal). The results indicated that higher mRNA levels of MyHCI type genes were found in the soleus muscles of piglets that suckled from LA‐supplemented sows than from PA‐supplemented sows. In addition, LA treatment increased the gene expression of the type I muscle fibre marker troponin I (p < 0.01), suggesting that LA promoted muscle fibre type transformation to type I fibres. Moreover, PGC‐1α (p < 0.01) and MEF2c (p < 0.05) mRNA levels were higher in the piglets from the LA treatment group than in those from the PA treatment group. Furthermore, LA supplementation also significantly increased AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) mRNA levels (p < 0.05), which is an upstream regulator of PGC‐1α. Collectively, these findings demonstrated that maternal dietary LA supplementation promoted muscle fibre transformation to type I fibre and that this process may be mediated through an AMPK‐dependent pathway.