Is all food the same? It seems obvious that for a human the answer is no, but sometimes, with animals, we think that all ‘herbs’ are the same when they clearly are not.

There are many studies that examine the relationship between food quality and the ability of a particular species to survive; this is how nutrition can help conserve endangered species.

Specifically, we have studied the relationship between protein and the success of individuals. In this work, we analyze how just a higher content of a specific amino acid can affect how well the food is utilized, and, most importantly, to identify interesting markers that allow us to determine whether a food is better or worse for animals. This is known as the concept of ideal protein, and we are applying it to conserve species.

To do this, we analyzed five different diets (represented by the different colors observed in Image 1) where only the levels of three amino acids (lysine, sulfur-containing amino acids, and threonine) changed, and we analyzed the entire metabolome. As can be seen in the image, we reached the first conclusion: there is a dietary effect on the metabolome (as you can see, there is no overlap of points in the image). To continue with the study, we analyzed the metabolites that allowed us to identify which diets are better, with the idea of being able to analyze different ecosystems and predict responses, for example, to a rabbit repopulation.

This work has been published in the journal Communications Biology.