In particular, oil is constituted by a majority of PUFA, with an approximate ratio of 3:1 between ω-6 and ω-3 fatty acids, which is considered the best condition for human healthy17health [17]. Indeed, ω-3 FAs arehave been widely investigated, and a large body of evidence indicated their prominent role as protective lipid mediators in the context of inflammatory, metabolic, neurodegenerative, and neoplastic diseases18,19 [18, 19]. However, the knowledge about the use of HS in animal nutrition is still limited to tolerability and to the effects on production traits 8-16. Thus, using a RNA-seq approach, which represents one of the most relevant techniques to obtain a comprehensive analysis of gene expression changes and molecular processes influenced by the diet components, we investigated the effects of HS supplementedan HS-supplemented diet on the whole blood transcriptome of the lactating sheep. Whole blood represents a quick and accessible source of biological material and, most importantly, a gene expression analysis from this tissue ishas been successfully used to validate its metabolic status already from our and different groups1-2 (1-2,4-5,2020). However, before to assessassessing the effects of hempseed-supplementation on gene expression, we evaluatedanalysed the complete whole blood formula in both groups,-CTR (CTR and HSG-HSG) to evaluate the potential effects of HS on cellular subpopulation and did not find any difference (figure 1).
HS supplementation influences the expression of 314 genes. About 271 genes were up-regulated and, when we looked for the enriched biological pathways associated, the highest one was “oxidative phosphorylation (oas00190)” (Table 1). This upregulation was due to genes related to all four complexes and to ATP-synthase of the electron transport chain (supplementary figure 3).