Zebrafish as a model organism for nutrition and growth: towards comparative studies of nutritional genomics applied to aquacultured fishes

Abstract

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a common research model in fish studies of toxicology, developmental biology, neurobiology and molecular genetics; it has been proposed as a possible model organism for nutrition and growth studies in fish. The advantages of working with zebrafish in these areas are their small size, short generation time (12-14 weeks) and their capacity to produce numerous eggs (100-200 eggs/clutch). Since a wide variety of molecular tools and information are available for genomic analysis, zebrafish has also been proposed as a model for nutritional genomic studies in fish. The detailed study of every species employed as a model organism is important because these species are used to generalize how several biological processes occur in related organisms, and contribute considerably toward improving our understanding of the mechanisms involved in nutrition and growth. The objective of this review is to show the relevant aspects of the nutrition and growth in zebrafish that support its utility as a model organism for nutritional genomics studies. We made a particular emphasis that gene expression and genetic variants in response to zebrafish nutrition will shed light on similar processes in aquacultured fish.

Glucose overload in yolk has little effects on the long term modulation of carbohydrate metabolic genes in zebrafish (Danio rerio)

“…Mammals and fish are physiological different in terms of embryonic development, and therefore embryos are exposed to external stimuli in distinct ways: in the uterus the foetus is directly linked to maternal nutritional experiences, whereas in fish eggs the embryos rely exclusively on their endogenous yolk reserves. But despite this difference, it has been shown that fish share a high genetic similarity with mammals and thus some mechanisms for gene regulation, including nutritional regulation, can be conserved (Hemre et al, 2002;Ulloa et al, 2011). The present study showed that glucose supplementation in the early embryo had no marked benefits (at a molecular level) on the ability of zebrafish larvae and juveniles to cope with high glucose as a metabolic substrate.…”

“…Zebrafish (Danio rerio Hamilton 1822) is now firmly established as an important and informative model system for studying vertebrate embryogenesis and organogenesis, as well for the analysis of developmentally regulated genes in aspects related to human disease modelling (Ali et al, 2011;Kudoh et al, 2001). In addition to the wide variety of molecular tools and resources available for genomic analysis in zebrafish, the ease of breeding, the large number of offspring (embryos), the ex utero development of embryos and their optical transparency during early embryogenesis (Ulloa et al, 2011) make it a powerful model for studying early nutritional programming in fish through modification of embryo nutritional status. Fish eggs contain relatively low levels of carbohydrates in the vitellus and are generally rich in free amino acids and fatty acids (Hoar and Randall, 1988;Kamler, 2008).…”

Postprandial Regulation of Growth- and Metabolism-Related Factors in Zebrafish

“…Zebrafish has been proposed as a possible model organism to make inroads in nutritional physiology. 2 However, to our knowledge, studies on the field remain scarce and deal mainly with the effect of fasting and/or refeeding. 3,4 Here, we investigated in this species not only the effect of a single meal on the postprandial expression of several hepatic and muscle metabolism-related genes and proteins but also that of manipulating proteins and carbohydrates content of the diet.…”

“…Obviously, it has been found that zebrafish might be an interesting model organism in nutrition research. 2 However, this potential has not yet been realized, and to our knowledge, studies on the field remain scarce and concern mainly the effect of long-term food deprivation and/or refeeding on hepatic, brain, and skeletal muscle transcriptomes. 3,4 Recently, Robison et al examined for the first time the effect of manipulating dietary macronutrient composition on hepatic gene expression in zebrafish.…”

Dietary Protein Source Influence on Body Size and Composition in Growing Zebrafish

“…requirements may be predicted based on other nutrition studies using teleost models, [20][21][22][23] few nutrient requirement studies have been formally presented in the research literature for zebrafish. 3,24,25 Nevertheless, although zebrafish nutrition and obesity research is still developing compared with rodent models, 26 the information reported from decades of rodent nutrition research may be used to rapidly test dietary compositions for a variety of growth and eventual health-related outcomes.…”