Spatiotemporal Variation of Residual Cortisol Obstructs Nutrient Acquisition in Animal-Derived Foods by Perturbing Glycerophospholipid Metabolism

Cortisol is inevitably secreted by pigs due to the physicalandpsychological stressors produced by mixed group transportation andpreslaughter handling. Accumulated cortisol in animal tissues entersthe human body through the food chain and entails potential risksto human health. An integrated lipidome and proteome analysis wasconducted to investigate the effect of the spatiotemporal variationof residual cortisol on nutrient acquisition in pork. A total of 55crucial lipid molecules associated with cortisol residue were identifiedbased on debiased sparse partial correlation analysis. Label-freeproteomics was applied to screen 58 differentially abundant proteins(including phospholipase A(2), lysophosphatidylcholine acyltransferase,and CTP:phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase), indicating that cortisolresidue perturbed the glycerophospholipid biosynthetic process andglycerophospholipid metabolic process. Cortisol induced downregulationsof cPLA2 encoding genes and decreased phospholipase A(2) activity,resulting in the bioaccumulation of phosphatidylethanolamine (from36.86 to 43.18 mg kg(-1)). Cortisol increased theactivity of CTP:phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase by improving theavailability of fatty acids and aggregating the inactive L-form (lipid-independentform) to the active H-form (lipid-associated form). The metabolicpathways perturbed by cortisol resulted in phosphatidylcholine degradation(from 93.73 to 58.28 mg kg(-1)) and lysophosphatidylcholineaccumulation (from 3.39 to 5.16 mg kg(-1)). Thesefindings indicated that cortisol residue deteriorated meat qualityand obstructed nutrient acquisition in animal-origin foods.