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Dietary Citrulline but Not Ornithine Counteracts Dietary Arginine Deficiency in Rats by Increasing Splanchnic Release of Citrulline^1,2,3,

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Boston, MA 02111

Ornithine and citrulline have different arginine-sparing capabilities when provided in an arginine-deficient diet. Rats were fed arginine-deficient diets containing ornithine or citrulline to see the effect on net fluxes of free arginine, ornithine and citrulline across the portal-drained viscera (PDV) and liver. The diets contained either 10 g arginine/kg diet (+Arg) or no arginine: the –Arg/+Ala diet contained additional alanine and the –Arg/+Orn and –Arg/+Cit diets contained ornithine and citrulline, respectively, in amounts isomolar to the amount of arginine in the control (+Arg) diet. Blood arginine concentrations were 50% lower than control values (P < 0.001) in rats fed the –Arg/+Ala or the –Arg/+Orn diet. However, addition of citrulline to the arginine-deficient diet restored blood arginine concentrations. The source of the circulating arginine in the rats fed the –Arg/+Cit diet was neither the PDV nor the liver; net splanchnic uptake of arginine was 0.3 µmol/min. Net citrulline release was substantial from the PDV (0.65 µmol/min) as well as from the splanchnic bed (0.67 µmol/min) of rats fed the –Arg/+Cit diet, such that blood citrulline concentrations were more than double (P < 0.001) those in rats fed the +Arg or –Arg/+Orn diet. Splanchnic release of citrulline in rats fed the -Arg/+Cit diet but not in rats fed the –Arg/+Orn diet supported the production of arginine in non-splanchnic organs such as, presumably, the kidney.

KEY WORDS: • arginine • ornithine • rats • citrulline • interorgan flux

¹ Presented at Experimental Biology 93, March 1993, New Orleans, LA [Hartman, W. J., Torre, P. M. & Prior, R. L. (1993) Arginine (ARG) precursors in an ARG-deficient diet: effects on portal-drained viscera (PDV) and hepatic amino acid flux following a meal in rats. FASEB J. 7: A2265].

² Mention of a trade name, proprietary product or specific equipment does not constitute a guarantee by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and does not imply its approval to the exclusion of other products that may be suitable.

³ The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

⁴ To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Manuscript received 8 October 1993. Revision accepted 24 March 1994.

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