Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Regulation of Urea Recycling into the Gastrointestinal Tract and Ammonia Metabolism in Ruminants
    (2004-12-08) Sunny, Nishanth Edakulathur; Bequette, Brian J; Animal Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The primary objective of this study was to determine the extent ruminants control urea recycling to the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), independent of rumen microbial metabolism. Urea kinetics were determined by continuous infusion of [15N15N]urea (4 levels) to jugular vein of sheep (n = 4; 28.1kg) fed a low protein (6.8%) diet. Although urea recycling to the GIT (P < 0.001) increased with each level of urea, the proportion (P < 0.001) and amount (P < 0.001) of recycled urea returning as ammonia to liver for ureagenesis also increased. In consequence a decreasing proportion (P = 0.003) of recycled urea was used for microbial protein synthesis. The present study suggests that ruminants have a large capacity to partition urea-N to the GIT. Thus, rather than up-regulating urea recycling, there appears to be more potential to improve N efficiency in ruminants by manipulating the rumen environment to optimize capture of recycled N.