Abstract
BackgroundCompensatory growth refers to the phenomenon in which organisms grow faster after the improvement of an adverse environment and is thought to be an adaptive evolution to cope with the alleviation of the hostile environment. Many fish have the capacity for compensatory growth, but the underlying cellular mechanisms remain unclear. In the present study, microarray and nontargeted metabolomics were performed to characterize the transcriptome and metabolome of zebrafish liver during compensatory growth.ResultsZebrafish could regain the weight they lost during 3 weeks of fasting and reach a final weight similar to that of fish fed ad libitum when refed for 15 days. When refeeding for 3 days, the liver displayed hyperplasia accompanied with decreased triglyceride contents and increased glycogen contents. The microarray results showed that when food was resupplied for 3 days, the liver TCA cycle (Tricarboxylic acid cycle) and oxidative phosphorylation processes were upregulated, while DNA replication and repair, as well as proteasome assembly were also activated. Integration of transcriptome and metabolome data highlighted transcriptionally driven alterations in metabolism during compensatory growth, such as altered glycolysis and lipid metabolism activities. The metabolome data also implied the participation of amino acid metabolism during compensatory growth in zebrafish liver.ConclusionOur study provides a global resource for metabolic adaptations and their transcriptional regulation during refeeding in zebrafish liver. This study represents a first step towards understanding of the impact of metabolism on compensatory growth and will potentially aid in understanding the molecular mechanism associated with compensatory growth.
Highlights
Compensatory growth refers to the phenomenon in which organisms grow faster after the improvement of an adverse environment and is thought to be an adaptive evolution to cope with the alleviation of the hostile environment
Another study focused on the recovery of trout muscle tissues 4, 11 and 36 days after refeeding; the results showed that the compensatory growth process upregulated transcription, RNA metabolism and mitochondrial functions [14]
Genes upregulated after 3 days of refeeding Cluster I contained 1852 unique genes with early and transient induction after refeeding for 3 days after 3 weeks of fasting, and most of these genes recovered their expression after refeeding for 15 days
Summary
Compensatory growth refers to the phenomenon in which organisms grow faster after the improvement of an adverse environment and is thought to be an adaptive evolution to cope with the alleviation of the hostile environment. Many fish have the capacity for compensatory growth, but the underlying cellular mechanisms remain unclear. Microarray and nontargeted metabolomics were performed to characterize the transcriptome and metabolome of zebrafish liver during compensatory growth. When the food supply is restored, some species can accelerate their growth and promote biomass accumulation, which is called compensatory growth [4]. Jia et al BMC Genomics (2019) 20:919 growth is determined by the balance of protein synthesis and protein breakdown, a reduction in protein degradation may be one of the reasons for the increase in total muscle mass during compensatory growth. Liver-derived reactive oxygen species have been shown to regulate muscle fiber growth in a way that has not been elucidated [11]. We speculated that liver metabolism was involved in compensatory growth, which was why liver was chose for the following analysis
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