Abstract
The necessary replacement of fish meal with other protein source in diets of commercially important fish has prompted the study of the effect of the inclusion of different vegetable proteins sources on growth performance and on the gastro-intestinal tract. Currently, soybean meal is the primary protein source as a fish meal replacement because of its low price and high availability. Likewise, it is been documented that the ingestion of soybean meal by several fish species, such as salmonids and carp, triggers a type of intestinal inflammation called enteritis. In this paper, we analyzed the effects of the ingestion of soybean meal and two of its components, soy protein and soy saponin, on zebrafish to establish the basis for using zebrafish larvae as a model for fish nutrition. We took advantage of the existence of different transgenic lines, which allowed us to perform in vivo analysis. Our results indicated that larvae that were feed with soybean meal developed a clear intestinal inflammation as early as two day after beginning the diet. Moreover, we determined that is not the soy protein present in the diet but the soy saponin that is primarily responsible for triggering the immune response. These findings support the use of zebrafish screening assays to identify novel ingredients that would to improved current fish diets or would formulate new ones.
Highlights
For more than 50 years, zebrafish has been a model organism primarily used in developmental biology and embryology [1]
The first diet was a commercial pellet for zebrafish larva and was used as a negative control; the second diet had fish meal as the principal protein source (100FM) and the third diet contained an inclusion of 50% soybean meal (50SBM) (Table 1)
As indicated in the literature, and demonstrate in this paper, neutrophils migration towards affected areas correlates with pro-inflammatory cytokine production, making transgenic lines ‘‘live indicator’’ of an inflammation process
Summary
For more than 50 years, zebrafish has been a model organism primarily used in developmental biology and embryology [1]. Studies in different fish species, such Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout and carp, indicated that the inclusion of SBM in the diet negatively influence the feed ingestion, the intestinal morphology and the immunological function of these fish [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] In these species, SBM triggers an inflammation process in the distal intestine, which is characterized by shorter primary and secondary mucosal folds, an increase in the number of goblet cells [22,23] and the infiltration of macrophages, neutrophils, lymphocytes, eosinophils, immunoglobulin M (IgM) and T cells into the lamina propria, a situation that decrease the capacity of the distal intestine to absorb nutrients [14,24]. We demonstrate that the in vivo analysis of the inflammatory process by monitoring the infiltration of neutrophils in the intestine, is a simple method that allows the detecting of the effects of different diets early in the inflammation process
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