Figure 2.

Catabolism of nutritionally EAA for the synthesis of AA in animals. Dietary intake of most EAA exceeds their use for protein synthesis in the body. In contrast, the typical corn- and soybean meal-based diet cannot provide sufficient amounts of arginine, aspartate, glutamate, glutamine, glycine, and proline for protein accretion for young pigs, and these AA must be synthesized from EAA. BCAA, branched-chain AA; D3PG, D-3-phosphoglycerate; Gluc, glucose; HYP, hydroxyproline; TF, tetrahydrofolate.