Contributions of MS metabolomics to gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) nutrition. Serum fingerprinting of fish fed low fish meal and fish oil diets

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of fish meal (FM) and fish oil (FO) replacement by plant proteins and oils in the serum metabolome of two-year old gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) fed from early life stages with control and experimental diets. Randomly selected fish were overnight sampled and clotted serum was used for metabolomics fingerprinting by means of ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. More than 12,500 different m/z ions were detected, and Partial Least Squares-Discriminant analysis separated fish fed control and plant-based diets, with a 71% of variance explained and 44% of variance predicted by the two first components. After variable importance in projection (VIP) and Benjamini-Hochberg test correction filtering, 50 endogenous compounds were elucidated as highly discriminant features of dietary treatment. Most of them were lipid-related compounds and reflected the different fatty acid composition of dietary oils, whereas changes in N-acyl taurines, cytidine and nucleoside related compounds would indicate changes in tissue repair and DNA degradation processes. Untargeted analysis also identified some exogenous compounds as markers of marine and vegetable raw materials. In the case of hercynine (antioxidant fungi and mycobacteria product), this was exemplified by a close lineal association between circulating and feed levels. Targeted approaches were focused on vitamins and a clear reduction of B 12 , indirectly assessed via methylmalonic acid levels, was found in fish fed vegetable diets. Conversely, serum riboflavin (B 2) and pantothenic acid (B 5) levels were consistently increased, which highlighted the close link between nutrition and gut microbiota.

Stearoyl-CoA desaturase (scd1a) is epigenetically regulated by broodstock nutrition in gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata)

“…Thus, farmed gilthead sea bream [2] and European sea bass [3] can grow efficiently from early life stages with less than 10% of marine feed ingredients. These findings are also supported by wide-serum metabolomic approaches, based on ultra-sensitive high liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry [4].…”

Metabolomics and fish nutrition: a review in the context of sustainable feed development

“…The serum LC‐MS study of Gil‐Solsona et al . () revealed unsuspected alterations of vitamin metabolites of fish fed low FM and FO and so demonstrated the advantage of a metabolomic approach to identify nutritional deficiency markers. In some cases, the identification of metabolites sheds light on specific metabolic pathways impacted by a diet of interest.…”

“…For LC‐MS for instance, the higher sensitivity of MS leads to about 12,500 molecular features ( m/z ions), corresponding to much less potential metabolites, here 55 discriminant identified metabolites (Gil‐Solsona et al . ). Thus, the latter analytical strategy can be recommended for biomarker discovery as demonstrated by Gil‐Solsona et al .…”

“…Multiple reaction monitoring in tandem mass spectrometry can also be recommended to target specific compounds such as vitamins as done by Gil‐Solsona et al . (). However, feature identification and biological interpretation may prove difficult due to the lack of dedicated metabolite database for fish.…”

Genome Sequencing and Transcriptome Analysis Reveal Recent Species-specific Gene Duplications in the Plastic Gilthead Sea Bream

“…Adaptation to varying environments, including high tolerance to changes in water salinity, dissolved oxygen concentration, temperature, social hierarchy or diet composition are also a characteristic feature of gilthead sea bream, making this species a rather unique fish with a high plasticity to farming and challenging environments. This has been assessed in a number of physiological studies with focus on nutrition (Benedito-Palos et al, 2016; Simó-Mirabet et al, 2018; Gil-Solsona et al, 2019), chronobiology (Mata-Sotres et al, 2015; Yúfera et al, 2017), feeding behavior (López-Olmeda et al, 2009; Sánchez et al, 2009), stress (Calduch-Giner et al, 2010; Castanheira et al, 2013; Pérez-Sánchez et al, 2013; Bermejo-Nogales et al, 2014; Magnoni et al, 2017; Martos-Sitcha et al, 2017; Martos-Sitcha et al, 2019) or disease resilience (Cordero et al, 2016; Estensoro et al, 2016; Piazzon et al, 2018; Simó-Mirabet et al, 2018). However, the underlying genetic bases of this adaptive plasticity remain unknown.…”