Expression of Ghrelin in gastrointestinal tract and the effect of early weaning on Ghrelin expression in lambs

Ghrelin, an endogenous ligand for growth hormone secretagogue receptor, plays an important role in stimulating hormone secretion, development of gastrointestinal tract, food intake and regulating energy balance of animals. In this study we isolated the cDNA sequence of ovine Ghrelin from the abomasums of 7-day-aged lambs. Real-time PCR was used to determine the abundance of Ghrelin mRNA in lamb gastrointestinal tract, and analyze the development changes of abomasums Ghrelin mRNA expression in 0–56 days lambs, as well as find the effects of 42-day weaning on Ghrelin mRNA expression in lamb abomasums. The results showed that: (1) Ghrelin mRNA was expressed widely in gastrointestinal tract and was significantly higher in the abomasums than in other tissues (rumen, reticulum, omasum, duodenum, jejunum, ileum) (P < 0.01); (2) The expression of abomasums Ghrelin mRNA in lamb increased with the growth of age, it reached a plateau at the age of 49 days, however, got a slightly decrease at the age of 56 days; (3) The expression of abomasums Ghrelin mRNA of the 42 days-weaned groups were significantly lower than the no-weaned groups (P < 0.05), and the Ghrelin mRNA expression of the two treatments reached a maximum at the age of 49 days; (4) Correlation analysis indicated that the linear correlativity between abomasums Ghrelin mRNA expression and abomasums weight was very prominent (R2 = 0.647, P = 0.009). Our results suggested that ovine Ghrelin gene may play an important role in the development of lamb abomasums and 42-day weaning could down regulate the expression of abomasum Ghrelin mRNA, but the mechanism of these needs further research.