The digestive capacity of red drum larvae throughout development was evaluated by characterizing and quantifying digestive enzyme activities using biochemical and substrate-SDS-PAGE techniques with specific inhibitors. Results showed that red drum larvae posses a nearly complete set of alkaline proteases since first feeding (3 days post-hatch). Alkaline proteases played a major role in digestio...

During these last 20 years, many studies have focussed on the development of the digestive tract in marine fish larvae. Most of the studies aimed at acquiring knowledge on the optimal form of dietary supply for different nutrients, in order to formulate a compound diet able to totally replace live preys in the fish larvae feeding sequence. Consequently, most of the studies aimed at describing t...

Three hundred one-day-old male broiler chickens (Ross-308) were fed corn-soybean basal diets containing non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) enzyme and different levels of acid protease from 1 to 42 days of age to investigate the effects of exogenous enzymes on growth performance, digestive function, activity of endogenous digestive enzymes in the pancreas and mRNA expression of pancreatic digestive...

BACKGROUND Measures to improve bird performance have been sought due to the imminent phase out of in-feed antibiotics in poultry and continued demand for higher poultry feeding efficiency. Increasing grain particle size and dietary fibre may improve gizzard function, digestive efficiency and nutrient absorption. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect increased particle size of corn and...

Blood-feeding parasites employ a battery of proteolytic enzymes to digest the contents of their bloodmeal. Host haemoglobin is a major substrate for these proteases and, therefore, a driving force in the evolution of parasite-derived proteolytic enzymes. This review will focus on the digestive proteases of the major blood-feeding nematodes - hookworms (Ancylostoma spp. and Necator americanus) a...

Excessive ethanol consumption is a common risk factor for acute and chronic pancreatitis. Ethanol could lead to the onset of pancreatitis in a number of ways; the most recently discovered is its effect on intrapancreatic digestive enzyme activation, by either sensitizing acinar cells to pathologic stimuli or stimulating the release of a secretagogue (cholecystokinin) from duodenal I cells. Rece...

Small-intestine-type differentiation of the area-vitellina endoderm of quail embryos, cultured in association with digestive-tract mesenchymes of chick embryos, was analysed chronologically with special attention to the appearance of a striated border and its enzymes (alkaline phosphatase and a-glucosidase). Undifferentiated endoderm of the area vitellina differentiated first into yolk-sac pare...

In exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) there is insufficient production or secretion of digestive enzymes by the pancreas with associated maldigestion. Usually multiple enzymes need to be affected to show clinical disease, although there is one report of a patient with a lipase-only defect. Since lipase is the rate-limiting enzyme in pancreatic digestion, deficiency in just that single enzy...