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The insulin gene as an energy homeostasis biomarker in Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus)

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Abstract

Insulin plays an important role in maintaining energy homeostasis and has the potential to be an indicator of energy homeostasis in the Yangtze sturgeon, Acipenser dabryanus. In this study, the Yangtze sturgeon insulin (Adinsulin) was cloned and characterized. To evaluate the possibility of insulin as an energy state assessment indicator, quantification real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) was used to evaluate expression changes in different tissues (the whole brain, esophagus, cardiac stomach, pyloric stomach, pyloric caeca, duodenum, valvula intestine, rectum, liver, pancreas, spleen, kidney, heart, muscle, gill and eye) from 6 fish (average weight 325.7 ± 22.3 g) and in three experiments including postprandial, fasting and re-feeding, and glucose tolerance treatment in which fish were divided into two groups including a group that administered a glucose solution (1 ul/g body weight) and another group that administered sterile water as control. In these three experiments, 6 fish were sampled, respectively, then been used to evaluate expression changes of insulin. All fish in feeding groups were fed in tanks (60.0 cm × 50.0 cm × 40.0 cm) with a commercial diet (crude protein ≥ 40%, crude fat ≥ 12%, coarse fiber ≤ 6%, crude ash ≤ 18%; TONGWEI CO., LTD, China) once a day at 16:00. The result showed that Adinsulin was highly expressed in the pancreas, which was the basis for the next experiment to use the pancreas as the test target. Adinsulin expression significantly increased 1 h after feeding and decreased rapidly after 3 h of feeding, but it was still significantly higher than that of the group without feeding (P < 0.01). Compared to the feeding group, the expression of Adinsulin was significantly reduced in the fasting group of 3 days (P < 0.01), 6 days (P < 0.01), 10 days (P < 0.05), 11 days (P < 0.05) and 13 days (P < 0.01) and was no significant difference in re-feeding for 1st day, 2nd day and 4th day, but there was difference between re-feeding group and fasting group. After glucose tolerance treatment, serum glucose levels increased significantly (P < 0.05), accompanied by a significant increase (P < 0.001) in insulin expression. This study result shows that insulin has the capacity to measure the energy homeostasis of Yangtze sturgeon. Further development of detection methods for sturgeon plasma or serum insulin will avoid slaughtering animals and is more practical in energy homeostasis assessment.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Fishery Institute of the Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences for providing the fish used in these experiments and for permitting the use of part of its laboratory for the study.

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Major Project of the Education Department in Sichuan (12ZA120) and the Double Branch Plan of Sichuan Agricultural University (03571762). This study was supported by the China Scholarship Council (201906910073).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Animal Science and Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, 211# Huimin Road, Chengdu, 611130, China

    Xin Zhang, Hu Chen, Ya Li, Ni Tang, Defang Chen & Zhiqiong Li

  2. Key Laboratory of Tropical Hydrobiology and Biotechnology of Hainan Province, Hainan Aquaculture Breeding Engineering Research Center, College of Marine Sciences, Hainan University, Hainan 5, Haikou, China

    Hu Chen

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  1. Xin Zhang
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  2. Hu Chen
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Contributions

Z.L. and H.C. were involved in conceptualization; X.Z., N.T. and Y.L. helped in methodology; H.C. contributed to software; H.C., D.C. and Y.L. were involved in validation; H.C. and X.Z. helped in formal analysis; X.Z., N.T. and Y.L. contributed to investigation; D.C. and Z.L. were involved in resources; H.C. helped in data curation; X.Z. contributed to writing—original draft preparation; H.C. and Z.L. were involved in writing—review and editing; H.C. helped in visualization; Z.L. contributed to supervision, project administration; Z.L. and H.C were involved in funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Hu Chen or Zhiqiong Li.

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Animal experiments were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Sichuan Agricultural University with approval numbers B20172101-1711, B20172101-1802, B20172101-1806, and B20172101-1910.

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Zhang, X., Chen, H., Li, Y. et al. The insulin gene as an energy homeostasis biomarker in Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus). Fish Physiol Biochem 48, 693–705 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10695-022-01079-z

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