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Effect of Variations in Dietary Protein and Amino Acids on the Alkaline Phosphatase of the Zinc-deficient Chick^{1, 2,}

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

Zinc-deficiency symptoms in the chick can vary with the source of protein when diets are supplemented with histidine, without apparent reference to zinc status. To determine if there also was a relationship with the alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity of various tissues, one-day-old chicks were fed low zinc diets based on casein or isolated soy protein (ISP) and supplemented with 1% histidine, 1% arginine, 1% histidine plus 1% arginine or 20 ppm zinc for 21 days. The AP activities of tibia, liver, brain, and duodenum were measured. The stability to urea treatment of the AP of the tissue homogenates was measured. Histidine prevented leg deformities and increased tibia AP significantly when ISP was fed; it had neither effect when casein was fed. The AP activity of brain or liver was not significantly affected by the amino acid supplements. The zinc supplement to each protein prevented leg deformities and significantly increased tibia AP activity; it had no significant effect on duodenal AP nor that of brain or liver when body and tissue weights and AP activity were analyzed for variance. Dietary zinc apparently did not exert a specific effect on brain or liver AP apart from growth promotion. Dietary factors other than zinc could affect AP activity of tibia or duodenum. Dietary variations did not cause a significant difference in stability to urea treatment of tibia or of duodenal AP. For liver or brain, there were no significant differences in stability to urea treatment when zinc was the supplement. When dietary zinc was low, some dietary variations caused a significant difference in stability to urea treatment, but there was no common pattern. Because AP activity of brain or liver did not vary with diet, this suggests the possibility that adaptations of AP in some tissues, when dietary zinc is low, may be a factor in regulating activity.

KEY WORDS: • dietary protein • zinc • histidine • alkaline phosphatase

¹ Published by permission of the Director of the Montana Experiment Station. Paper 422, journal series.

² A preliminary report of some of this work was given at the Fifty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Chicago, 1973. Federation Proc. 32, 895. (Abstr.)

Manuscript received 19 November 1973.