Aquatic feed is an important guarantee for marine aquaculture, but China is highly dependent on the import of feed ingredients. Therefore, precision animal nutrition has become an important part of China's overall strategy for food security. To realize precision nutrition, it is first necessary to master the metabolic characteristics of aquatic animals.

Recently, the marine biological resources and seawater aquaculture team of Guangxi Academy of Marine Sciences has thoroughly studied the mechanism of action of high-fat feeds, high-plant protein feeds and high-fat and high-plant protein feeds induced liver injury in pearl gentian grouper. It was found that high-fat diets adversely affected the intestinal microbiota, bile acid metabolism and lipid metabolism of grouper, which ultimately led to lipid deposition, liver injury and impaired growth performance. Meanwhile, high plant protein diets impaired grouper liver health and growth performance by affecting gut microbiota, bile acid metabolism and inflammatory responses. Compared with high-fat diets and high-vegetable protein diets, high-fat and high-vegetable protein diets did not exacerbate the liver health problems of grouper, but further inhibited the growth of grouper. The results of this study provide a concrete basis for the negative effects of nutritional imbalance in aquafeeds and an important reference for the development of scientific and efficient feed formulations for grouper.

The results were published in the journal entitled “Dietary high lipid and high plant-protein affected growth performance, liver health, bile acid metabolism and gut microbiota in grouper”. The results were published in Animal Nutrition (Zone I, CAS), a leading international journal, with the title “Dietary high lipid and high plant-protein affect growth performance, liver health, bile acid metabolism and gut microbiota in groupers. Dr. Jia Xu was the first author, and researcher Fajun Jiang was the corresponding author. The paper was supported by Guangxi Academy of Sciences Innovation Team Initiation Grant (CQ-C-202301) and other programs.

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aninu.2024.08.005.

撰稿：徐佳