QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text (PDF) Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Lease, J. G. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Lease, J. G.

Effect of Histidine on Tibia Alkaline Phosphatase of Chicks Fed Zinc-deficient Sesame Meal Diets^{1, 2,}

Home Economics Research, Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59715

Chicks were fed a sesame meal diet to produce a zinc deficiency, characterized in part by the appearance of leg deformities by 21 days of age. A 1% histidine dietary supplement moderated the severity of the deformities. The objective was to follow the development of the activity of tibia alkaline phosphatase (AP) in relation to appearance of leg deformities and other signs of a zinc deficiency, using chicks 1 day, 10 days and 21 days old. Zinc or histidine, or both, served as supplements. The whole tibia was homogenized and aliquots for AP analysis were taken without further purification. By 10 days, before the overt appearance of leg deformities, there was a trend for histidine to increase the activity of tibia AP. By 21 days the histidine supplement to the basal diet had markedly reduced the severity of the leg deformities; the tibia AP was significantly increased (P < 0.05). Growth or tibia zinc content was little affected. Amino acid analysis of the sesame meal showed it contributed about 0.5% of histidine and 2.7% of arginine to the diet. The possible implications of suppression of full utilization of dietary histidine by the excess dietary arginine are discussed in terms of the essentiality of histidine for the activation of the AP of E. coli. In one experiment, activity of the AP of the brain or the liver was not significantly altered by the histidine. This suggests that tibia AP may be unique in its response to histidine in the zinc-deficient chick.

KEY WORDS: • alkaline phosphatase • zinc • histidine

¹ Publiahed by permission of the Director of the Montana Experiment Station. Paper 314, journal series.

² A preliminary report of this work was given at the Fifty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Chicago, April 12–17, 1971. Federation Proc. 30: 643 (abstr.).

Manuscript received 13 December 1971.