Metabolomics Reveals that Crossbred Dairy Buffaloes Are More Thermotolerant than Holstein Cows under Chronic Heat Stress

Heat stress (HS) threatens the worldwide dairy industry by decreasing animal production performance and health. Holstein cows and dairy buffaloes are the most important dairy animals, but their differences in the metabolic mechanism of thermotolerance remains elusive. In this study, we used serum metabolomics to evaluate the differences in thermotolerance between Holstein cows and crossbred dairy buffaloes under chronic heat stress (HS) and thermal-neutral conditions. In response to HS, the body temperatures and respiratory rates were increased more for Holstein cows than for dairy buffaloes (38.78 vs. 38.24 °C, p < 0.001; 43.6 vs. 32.5 breaths/min, p < 0.001). HS greatly affected serum metabolites associated with amino acids, fatty acids and bile acids. Enriched metabolic pathways of these serum metabolites are closely related to HS. We demonstrated that buffaloes adapt to HS by adopting a metabolism of branched-chain amino acids, ketogenic amino acids and gluconeogenesis, but Holstein cows decrease the ...