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Variations in Daily Urinary-N of Adult Rats on Varying Protein Levels¹

Department of Biometry, Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Science, Law College Road, Pune, 411 004, India

The pattern of daily fluctuations in urinary nitrogen (UN) of adult male albino rats fed on varying protein levels was studied. In the first experiment, two protein levels (7% and 13%) were provided, using two rats at each level for 10 weeks. In the second experiment, a submaintenance protein level (4%) was added, and finally, an excess protein level (30%) was tested on two rats. Time series analysis was used to study the underlying pattern of daily fluctuations in the UN of adult rats maintaining body weights on a near constant intake. It is shown that the behavior of daily fluctuations as reflected by serial correlation is in fact affected by the protein level fed. It was observed that on the 7% and 13% levels, the serial correlations were significant and the process could be identified as an autoregressive process of order one. At very low (4%) as well as very high (30%) levels of protein, however, the daily fluctuations were random. The behavior of daily fluctuations in UN was thus observed to be affected by the level of protein fed.

KEY WORDS: • N-balance • serial correlation • time-series analysis

¹ Research was financed from a grant received for the project, "Studies on Protein Metabolism," from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi.

Manuscript received 18 August 1981.