Abstract
This study investigated the effects of dietary terrestrial animal and plant proteins on the intestinal transcriptomes of yellowtail kingfish (YTK), Seriola lalandi, an ecologically and economically important marine species in Australia. Five diets containing fish meal (FM), poultry by-product meal (PBM), blood meal (BLM), faba bean meal (FBM) and corn gluten meal (CGM) were formulated and fed over a period of 4 weeks. The Illumina RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) results identified a suite of differentially expressed genes involved in nutrient metabolism and protein digestion pathways, reinforced by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) results. These findings provide molecular support to the notion that PBM and FBM are useful raw materials in commercial diets for YTK. Using the same evidence, we have demonstrated that BLM and CGM may be less useful and their incorporation into commercial aquafeeds for this species should be done cautiously. The differentially expressed genes showed a subtle difference and high correlation with apparent nutrient digestibility of raw materials. Further, our results indicate that transcriptome profiling provides a useful tool to evaluate alternative protein sources for use in aquaculture feeds.
Highlights
Yellowtail kingfish (YTK), Seriola lalandi, is an important marine carnivorous aquaculture species throughout the world due to its rapid growth and ravenous feeding behavior [1,2,3,4,5]
Little is known about the effect of replacing fish meal (FM) with alternative protein sources on the fish transcriptome and importantly, how that relates to nutrient digestibility or availability
These diets were originally formulated to determine the apparent digestibility of individual raw materials that might be used in commercial aquafeeds for this species [32]
Summary
Yellowtail kingfish (YTK), Seriola lalandi, is an important marine carnivorous aquaculture species throughout the world due to its rapid growth and ravenous feeding behavior [1,2,3,4,5]. Over the last several years significant research has been conducted to identify suitable alternative protein sources that could fulfil the requirements of farmed fish [1,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Terrestrial animal by-products (e.g., poultry by-product meal (PBM), blood meal (BLM), meat and bone meal and feather meal etc.), contain significant levels of crude protein and provided they are processed correctly are usually well digested. As such rendered animal by-product meals have successfully been used to replaced FM in many fish diets [12,13,14,15].
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