Appetite-associated responses to central neuropeptide Y injection in quail
Introduction
Since its discovery over three decades ago (Tatemoto, 1982), neuropeptide Y (NPY), a potent orexigenic factor and one of the most abundant and ubiquitously-expressed neuropeptides in both the central and peripheral nervous systems (Chronwall and Zukowska, 2004), has been implicated in a wide range of physiological responses including locomotion (Heilig et al., 1989), memory (Flood and Morley, 1989), anxiety (Giesbrecht et al., 2010; Reichmann and Holzer, 2016), epilepsy (Klapstein and Colmers, 1997), circadian rhythm (Sindelar et al., 2005), reproduction (Sirotkin et al., 2015), adipose tissue biology (Zhang et al., 2014, 2015) and cardiovascular function (Jacques and Abdel-Samad, 2007; Zhu et al., 2016). The most well studied function of NPY is food intake regulation. Central injection of NPY increases food intake in a range of vertebrates including rats (Clark et al., 1984; Levine and Morley, 1984; Morley et al., 1987b), sheep (Miner et al., 1989), pigs (Parrott et al., 1986), white-crowned sparrows (Richardson et al., 1995), and chickens (Kuenzel et al., 1987; Newmyer et al., 2013). Repeated administration of NPY was associated with hyperphagia and increased body weight gain leading to obesity in rats (Beck et al., 1992; Dryden et al., 1995).
A major brain center mediating homeostatic food intake is the hypothalamus, where the main source of NPY is the arcuate nucleus (ARC; also known as the infundibular nucleus in birds) where it is co-expressed with another orexigenic factor, agouti-related peptide (AgRP) (Broberger et al., 1998). The ARC NPY neurons have projections to other hypothalamic regions associated with food intake (Chronwall et al., 1985). In mammals, the hunger-stimulating effect of NPY is mainly mediated via receptor sub-types 1 and 5 (NPYR1 and R5, respectively) (Mercer et al., 2011). The ARC also contains satiety function-associated neurons that co-express proopiomelanocortin (POMC) and cocaine- and amphetamine regulated transcript (CART) (Mercer et al., 2011). These neurons also express NPY receptors (Ghamari-Langroudi et al., 2005), signaling through which is associated with reduced anorexigenic tone in mammals (Mercer et al., 2011). Furthermore, 24 hour fasted Japanese quail exhibited a 1.5 fold increase in NPY mRNA expression (Boswell et al., 2002) and a 2.2 fold increase in AgRP mRNA expression (Phillips-Singh et al., 2003). Less is known about the hypothalamic mechanisms underlying the appetite-associated function of NPY in birds. In chickens, central NPY injection is associated with activation of the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) and lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) (Newmyer et al., 2013), and co-injection with alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH, a derivative of POMC) leads to a reduction in food intake (Cline and Smith, 2007). Moreover, relative quantities of hypothalamic NPYR1 and melanocortin receptor 4 (MC4R) mRNA were reduced by NPY in chicks that consumed a high protein and high carbohydrate diets, respectively (McConn et al., 2017).
Most feeding behavior research in birds utilizes the domestic chicken, Gallus gallus. Of all avians, the chicken has undergone the most intense artificial selection for specific traits, which has likely led to correlated responses in the neurobiology associated with food intake. The Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) has undergone less intense selection than the chicken but still adapts well to laboratory cage environments and handling. The objective of this research was to determine the effects of centrally-injected NPY on feeding behavior and hypothalamic physiology in Japanese quail.
Section snippets
Animals
Japanese quail were bred and hatched in our vivarium. The breeder flock was established with eggs donated by Dr. Mike Lacy at the University of Georgia. Upon removal from the hatcher, chicks were group caged in a brooder for 4 days, then individually in galvanized wire cages (8 cm wide, 7 cm deep and 8 cm high) in a room at a constant temperature of 35 ± 1 °C, 50 ± 5% relative humidity, with a 14-h light/10-h dark period (lights on at 05:00 h). At all times, unless otherwise noted, chicks had ad
Food and water intake: 0.5, 1, and 2 nmol NPY
At the highest dose evaluated, NPY decreased food intake (Fig. 1). On a cumulative basis (Fig. 1A) chicks injected with 2.0 nmol NPY decreased food intake, but only at 30 min post-injection. At 60 min post-injection, there was increased food intake in 1.0 nmol NPY-injected chicks. Food intake was not different in treated vs. vehicle-injected chicks at any other time or dose, although at 180 min, intake was greater in 1 than 0.5 nmol-injected chicks. On a non-cumulative basis (Fig. 1B), chicks
Discussion
The present findings demonstrate that NPY increased food intake in quail, consistent with effects reported for chickens, however magnitude differences were detected between age groups and among broiler (meat-type) and layer (egg-laying-type) chickens. For example, in day-old broilers, food intake doubled after central injection of 1.2 and 2.1 nmol NPY 60 min post injection (Kuenzel et al., 1987), whereas intake increased fivefold over controls in response to 2.1 nmol NPY in 4 week-old broilers (
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2021, NeuropeptidesCitation Excerpt :On the other hand, there is a possibility that the mechanism of NPY in the central control of food intake is modulated by energy homeostasis–related signals such as fasting and feeding. Central injection of NPY induced robust feeding in Japanese quails (McConn et al., 2018); however, there is a difference in the hypothalamic mRNA abundance of NPY and NPY receptors detected when they were subjected to different feeding conditions, including fasting, feeding, and re-feeding after fasting (McConn et al., 2019). In the current study, we investigated the changes in amino acid and monoamine metabolism in response to the central action of NPY in both fasting and feeding ad libitum conditions in neonatal chicks.
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2021, Acta HistochemicaCitation Excerpt :NPY plays numerous physiological functions such as food intake regulation (Kuenzel et al., 1987; Richardson et al., 1995; Yi et al., 2015), sexual maturation (Fraley and Kuenzel, 1993; Walsh and Kuenzel, 1997), body temperature and heat stress regulation (Harding et al., 2015; Clark et al., 2018; Chowdhury, 2019), insulin secretion (Kuenzel and McMurtry, 1988), and gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) secretion (Contijoch et al., 1993; Barker-Gibb et al., 1995). The role(s) of NPY in the regulation of feeding behavior has been extensively reported in birds (Kuenzel et al., 1987; Furuse et al., 1997; Ando et al., 2001; Cline and Smith, 2007; McConn et al., 2018). Food deprivation enhances expression of NPY mRNA (Boswell et al., 1999), neuron activity (Boswell et al., 2002), and NPY contents in the nucleus paraventricularis magnocellularis (paraventricular nucleus; PVN, Zhou et al., 2005; Lees et al., 2017; McConn et al., 2019).
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2020, Domestic Animal EndocrinologyCitation Excerpt :Neuropeptide Y increases food intake in rats [52] and chicks [35] and a dual injection of NPY and PrRP had an additive effect on food intake in chicks [12], suggesting a positively reinforcing relationship between NPY and PrRP in mediating orexigenic effects in birds. In 7-d-old quail, ICV injection of NPY increased food intake at a range of doses comparable to the broiler chick, and in NPY-injected quail, there were more c-Fos–expressing cells in the ARC, and more hypothalamic AgRP and NPYR1 and NPYR2 mRNA [53]. In broiler chicks, the anorexigenic effect of α-MSH overrode the orexigenic effect of NPY in a dual-injection study [54], thus it is possible that melanocortin signaling might be stimulated after the peak in PrRP-stimulated feeding behavior to attenuate the orexigenic pathways such as through NPY and restore homeostatic feeding.