Immunostimulatory effects of dietary poly-β-hydroxybutyrate in European sea bass postlarvae.

Franke, Andrea, Clemmesen, Catriona , De Schryver, Peter, Garcia-Gonzalez, Linsey, Miest, Joanna J. and Roth, Olivia (2017) Immunostimulatory effects of dietary poly-β-hydroxybutyrate in European sea bass postlarvae. Aquaculture Research, 48 (12). pp. 5707-5717. DOI 10.1111/are.13393.

[thumbnail of are13393.pdf] Text
are13393.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to Registered users only

Download (482kB) | Contact

Supplementary data:

Abstract

The stable production of high-quality fry in marine aquaculture is still hampered by unpredictable mortality caused by infectious diseases during larval rearing. Consequently, the development of new biocontrol agents is crucial for a viable aquaculture industry. The bacterial energy storage compound poly-β-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) has been shown to exhibit beneficial properties on aquatic organisms such as enhanced survival, growth, disease resistance and a controlling effect on the gastrointestinal microbiota. However, the effect of PHB on the developing immune system of fish larvae has so far not been investigated. In this study, the effect of feeding PHB-enriched Artemia nauplii on survival, growth and immune response in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) postlarvae was examined. Amorphous PHB was administered to 28-day-old sea bass postlarvae over a period of 10 days. The survival and growth performance were monitored, and the expression of 29 genes involved in immunity, growth, metabolism and stress-response was measured. While the expression of the insulin-like growth factor 1 (igf1), an indicator of relative growth, was upregulated in response to feeding PHB, the larval survival and growth performance remained unaffected. After 10 days of PHB treatment, the expression of the antimicrobial peptides dicentracin (dic) and hepcidin (hep) as well as mhc class IIa and mhc class IIb was elevated in the PHB fed postlarvae. This indicates that PHB is capable of stimulating the immune system of fish early life stages, which may be the cause of the increased resistance to diseases and robustness observed in previous studies.

Document Type: Article
Keywords: aquaculture; Dicentrarchus labrax; fish larvae; gene expression; immunostimulation; PHB
Research affiliation: OceanRep > GEOMAR > FB3 Marine Ecology > FB3-EV Marine Evolutionary Ecology
Refereed: Yes
Open Access Journal?: No
Publisher: Wiley
Projects: FINE-Aqua
Date Deposited: 26 Jun 2017 07:09
Last Modified: 06 Feb 2020 09:08
URI: https://oceanrep.geomar.de/id/eprint/38503

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item