Why Mitochondria Matter in the Modern Dairy Cow

This episode is available in English only.

How mitochondrial function shapes transition cow metabolism, nutrition, adaptation, and health while improving efficiency, resilience, and long-term dairy performance. 

Timestamps & Summary  

Chris Gwyn (01:54) 
Can you share with the audience a bit of the evolutionary biology of the mitochondrion, how this is crucial for today's dairy cow, and why this is such an interest to you? 

Dr. Nial O'Boyle 
I share your fascination with it. So, on the evolutionary side, the main theory is [that] ancient cells like archaea and a type of bacteria fused together, and the bacteria was the mitochondrion, or the pre-runner for the mitochondrion, and they became what we now know as the eukaryotic cell, so the cells that we're made up of. And that gave complex life the ability to happen. So that mitochondrion, like the bacterial cell, they can produce energy through electric potential through the membranes. But once that was brought into a cell, what you were able to do is start to do more complex work. You can produce more proteins because the energy was at the site of action. So, cells could get more complex, organisms could get more complex, and the argument is we wouldn't be here if that kind of merger hadn't happened. […] 

The reason why I got interested from a dairy cow point of view is that I was fortunate enough to do a master's at Michigan State with the late Professor Lorraine Sordillo. Learned a lot from her, great scientist, um, and was just really interested. She inspired me on, on that connection between immunology nutrition, fat mobilization, and just that whole immunological question. […] 

To me, that became the epicenter of this connection between nutrition and immunology. Metabolism is the conversion of food into chemical energy by the body to do work. And I don't think there's anything that comes close to the dairy cow as far as being a metabolic athlete. […] 

Chris Gwyn (08:02) 
Can you summarize for your audience what you've learned about management, nutrition of the transition cow that maybe relates to this improved or ability to improve mitochondrial function? 

Dr. Nial O'Boyle 
One thing I've learned with people like Professor Lance Baumgard and others that have brought up this conversation that calcium ketosis, et cetera, and what is correlation, and what's causation. And the more I drilled into the mitochondria, I would agree, but maybe approaching it from a different angle in that they're all related. Like, you need calcium for mitochondrial function, and you need mitochondrial function for calcium regulation. So that's related. […] 

Chris Gwyn (10:16) 
Do we think about managing cows to improve mitochondrial efficiency or function? 

Dr. Nial O'Boyle 
I don't think currently we do, but the more I've learned about it, the more I think we should. […]  

Chris Gwyn (19:55) 
Are we wrong to say it's the 50-kilo cow that's this crazy metabolic athlete, or are cows at lower production levels going through some of the same metabolic challenges? 

Dr. Nial O'Boyle 
I think the genetic machinery is there for most of these modern cows to be very high producing. It's just all these things that add up to maybe they're not expressing their genetic potential through the environmental and management sides. […] 

Chris Gwyn (24:08) 
Give us a message from your work that you've done, your experience related to the topic you'd love producers, nutritionists, veterinarians to remember about feeding these transition cows with the concept of thinking about what the mitochondria is doing? 

Dr. Nial O'Boyle 
I suppose one would be reiterating that supplying fuel isn't necessarily supplying fuel for metabolism. You need different profiles, as we talked about fatty acids, different cofactors, whether it's B vitamins or other nutrients, to make sure that fuel is metabolized and used efficiently.