Heat stress (HS) adversely affects several physiological responses in organisms, but the underlying molecular mechanisms involved are yet to be fully understood. L-Citrulline (L-Cit) is a nutraceutical amino acid that is gaining research interest for its role in body temperature regulation and nitric oxide synthesis. This study investigated whether dietary supplementation with L-Cit (1% of basal diet) could ameliorate the effects of acute HS on thermotolerance, redox balance, and inflammatory responses of broilers. Ross 308 broilers (288 chicks) were subjected to two environments; thermoneutral at 24°C (TNZ) or HS at 35°C for 5 h, and fed two diets; control or L-Cit. The results showed that HS increased the ear, rectal (RT), and core body (CBT) temperatures of broilers, along with higher respiratory rate. The RT and CBT readings were intermittently affected with time effect, whereas, L-Cit supplementation lowered the mean CBT than the control diet. Antioxidant assays showed that superoxide dismutase was increased during HS, while, catalase was promoted by L-Cit supplementation. In addition, L-Cit induced glutathione peroxidase activity compared to the control diet during HS. Hypothalamic heat shock protein (HSP)-90 was upregulated by HS, but L-Cit downregulated heat shock factor (HSF)-1, and HSP 60 mRNA expressions. HSF 3 mRNA expression was downregulated by L-Cit under TNZ condition. More so, HS increased the plasma nitric oxide (NO) concentration but lowered the total NO synthase (tNOS) activity. In contrast, L-Cit supplementation limited NO production but increased the tNOS activity. Arginase activity was increased in the control fed group during HS but L-Cit supplementation lowered this effect. The NOS-COX pathway was significantly affected under TNZ condition, since L-Cit supplementation downregulated the mRNA expression of iNOS-COX2 in the hypothalamus, and further reduced the serum PGE2 concentration. Together, these data indicates that L-Cit influenced the antioxidant defense, heat shock response and nitric oxide regeneration both under thermoneutral and HS conditions; and that L-Cit may be directly and/or indirectly involved in the central regulation of body temperature.

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Fumarate is a naturally occurring organic acid that is an intermediate of the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and has numerous applications in food, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. However, microbial fumarate production from renewable feedstock is limited by the intrinsic inefficiency of its synthetic pathway caused by week metabolites transportation and cofactor imbalance. In this study, spatial modulation and cofactor engineering of key pathway enzymes in the reductive TCA pathway were performed for the development of a Candida glabrata strain capable of efficiently producing fumarate. Specifically, DNA‐guided scaffold system was first constructed and optimized to modulate pyruvate carboxylase, malate dehydrogenase, and fumarase, increasing the fumarate titer from 0.18 to 11.3 g/L. Then, combinatorially tuning cofactor balance by controlling the expression strengths of adenosine diphosphate‐dependent phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase and NAD+‐dependent formate dehydrogenase led to a large increase in fumarate production up to 18.5 g/L. Finally, the engineered strain T.G‐4G‐S(1:1:2)‐P(M)‐F(H) was able to produce 21.6 g/L fumarate in a 5‐L batch bioreactor. This strategy described here, paves the way to develop efficient cell factories for the production of the other industrially useful chemicals.

3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is an emerging platform chemical, which can be used for the production of various value-added chemicals. So far, the traditional chemical synthesis of 3-HP has some difficulties...

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