Abstract
β-Glucans are immunostimulants and are widely used in aquaculture industry. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effects of different periods of β-glucan management on growth performance, intestinal health, and disease resistance in pearl gentian grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus♂ × Epinephelus fuscoguttatus♀). A commercial feed was used as control diet (CD), and the β-glucan diet (βD) was based on CD and further supplemented with 0.1% β-glucan. Grouper in control and long-term β-glucan diet (LGD) groups were fed with CD and βD for 8 weeks, respectively. Groupers in short-term β-glucan diet (SGD) group were fed with CD for the first 4 weeks and βD for the last 4 weeks. We found that LGD and SGD had no effect on growth performance but reduced the mortalities of grouper after challenging with Vibrio harveyi. In addition, both LGD and SGD increased intestinal morphology, enhanced antioxidant capacity, enhanced immunity, inhibited apoptosis, altered the transcriptional profile, and activated mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) signaling pathway in the intestine of grouper. Furthermore, the effect of LGD on most of the above parameters was comparable to that of SGD. In conclusion, LGD and SGD did not affect growth rate parameters but enhanced the intestinal health and disease resistance of pearl gentian grouper.
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Data availability
The original transcriptomics reads were deposited in National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database with BioProject ID PRJNA913212.
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Acknowledgements
We sincerely thank Jia Xu (College of Guangdong Ocean University) for providing technical help during the experiments. We would like to acknowledge Suzhou Bionovogene for providing technical help.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Conceptualization: Fan Wang, Zhiwen Wang, Junming Cao, and Yishan Lu; methodology: Fan Wang and Junming Cao; formal analysis and investigation: Fan Wang and Zhiwen Wang; writing—original draft preparation: Fan Wang; writing—review and editing: Fan Wang, Zhiwen Wang, Junming Cao, and Yishan Lu; funding acquisition: Yishan Lu and Zhiwen Wang; resources: Junming Cao and Yishan Lu; supervision: Junming Cao, Zhiwen Wang, and Yishan Lu. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This work was supported by the Project supported by Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (JCYJ20210324130014035) and the Sustainable Development Project of Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (KCXFZ20211020165547010).
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The experimental protocol was approved by the Animal Ethical and Welfare Committee of Guangdong Ocean University (Guangdong, China), processing ID GDOU-AEWC-20180063.
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Wang, F., Wang, Z., Cao, J. et al. Long- and short-term dietary β-glucan improves intestinal health and disease resistance in pearl gentian grouper (Epinephelus lanceolatus♂ × Epinephelus fuscoguttatus♀). Fish Physiol Biochem (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10695-024-01310-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10695-024-01310-z