Nutrients nitrogen balance

Nutritional sciences employ various experimental techniques. The methods used to assess a deficiency can also be used to determine the requirement for a given nutrient. Dietary deficiency, a technique applied to animals and microoigan isms, was used in the discovery of vitamins and in proving the essential nature of certain amino acids and lipids. This book features a strong emphasis on the techniques used to assess both requirements and deficiencies- Two of the most important techniques, those involving nitrogen balance and the respiratory quotient, are covered in some detail. 

Patients at risk for nutritional deficit are given nutritional support therapy to replace nutrients. Nutritional support therapy provides nutrients before there is a negative nitrogen balance to assure there is a positive nitrogen balance, enabling the patient to fight infectious diseases. 

Biological nitrogen fixation is well known to be associated with the blue-green algae and bacteria in marsh systems however, its quantitative contribution to the nitrogen balance or the reduction in yield it entails are not clear from available data. Supply of nutrients must be considered as a major, though not insurmountable, problem in the optimal management of marsh systems. 

In a nitrogen balance experiment with 26 diets followed by in vitro emission studies, Bakker et al. (pers. comm.) showed that the effect of the level of crude protein, fermentable NSP and acidifying salts in the diet had a linear and additive effect on the ammonia emission. Cumulative ammonia emission during a 7 day measuring period was (nutrients in g/kg) ... 

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