Transcriptome profiling reveal Acanthopanax senticosus improves growth performance, immunity and antioxidant capacity by regulating lipid metabolism in GIFT (Oreochromis niloticus).

Acanthopanax senticosus (APS) is a natural and officinal herb with an impressive range of health benefits for animal. An 8-week feeding trail with different APS levels (0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8‰) was conducted to evaluate the promotive effects of APS in GIFT. Results indicate that APS improved the growth performance, improved specific growth ratio (SGR) and feed efficiency ratio (FER), the optimum APS supplementation was estimated to 1.97‰ based on the regression analysis of SGR. Meanwhile, 2‰ and 4‰ APS improved the immune and antioxidant capacity in some extent evidenced by the plasma and hepatic biomarkers. With the analysis of transcriptome sequencing, 293 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, including 106 up-regulated and 187 down-regulated. According to the GO and KEGG enrichments, DEGs were mainly involved in lipid metabolism regulation, followed by amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, immunity, and antioxidant response. Transcriptional expression of PPARs signaling and key genes retrieved from transcriptome database confirmed that lipid metabolism was the main active biological process in response to dietary APS administration. These results indicate optimum APS (2‰) could be used as a feed additive that improve the growth performance by regulating lipid metabolism. This may provide insights for Chinese herb additive application in aquaculture production.