Efficiently Substituting Dietary Fish Meal with Terrestrial Compound Protein Enhances Growth, Health, and Protein Synthesis in Largemouth Bass

Abstract

Inappropriate substitution of dietary fishmeal (FM) can adversely affect the growth, health, and metabolism of carnivorous fish species. To effectively reduce the amount of dietary FM in carnivorous largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), a terrestrial compound protein (Cpro) with chicken meal, bone meal, and black soldier fly protein was used to formulate four isoproteic (52%) and isolipidic (12%) diets, namely T1 (36% FM), T2 (30% FM), T3 (24% FM), and T4 (18% FM), for feeding juveniles (initial weight: ~12 g) for 81 days. Results indicated that the growth performance, feed efficiency, and morphological indicators, as well as muscle texture and edible quality of fish, did not differ significantly among the four groups. However, the muscle protein contents and ATP/AMP ratio of fish in the T4 group were significantly increased in comparison with those of fish in the T1 group, while the opposite was true for muscle glycogen. Compared with the T1 group, high serum total amino acid and MDA contents, as well as low AST activities, were observed in the T3 and T4 groups, and relatively high intestinal trypsin and lipase activities were found in the T2–T4 groups. The transcripts of intestinal proinflammatory cytokines (il-1β, il-6, and tnf-α) were downregulated in the T2–T4 groups compared with T1 group, while the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines (il-10) and tight junction (zo-1 and occludin) showed the reverse trend. The mRNA expression of positive regulators related to protein synthesis (sirt1, pgc1-α, pi3k, and akt) were significantly upregulated in the muscle of fish fed diets T3 and T4, while their negative regulators (4e-bp1) mRNA levels were downregulated. The results indicate that the dietary FM of largemouth bass could be effectively reduced to at least 18% by the Cpro, which is beneficial to health, digestion, and protein synthesis for maintaining accelerated growth.