Development of fish gastrointestinal cell lines to optimize the fish feed of the future

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Fish feed will have to be improved if aquaculture is to be sustained in the future. A major reason for this is the current use in fish feed of fishmeal. Fishmeal is prepared from fish caught for the most part in the open ocean. This resource likely cannot be exploited any further than the current pace of harvesting because fish populations in the ocean appear to be generally in decline. As a result, the expansion of aquaculture is limited despite its importance to the economy and health of Canadians. One way of overcoming this limit on feed is to replace fishmeal with plant-based material.  Among plants, soybeans is considered to be a good economic choice. However, in the case of one of the most important aquaculture species in Canada, the Atlantic salmon, soybean-based diets are detrimental. They cause inflammation of the fish intestine, impeding growth and production. Efforts are being made to overcome this problem by identifying the troublesome soybean components and eventually removing them or blocking their actions. However, conventional feeding tests with fish make such an identification process slow and expensive. We are proposing to develop cell lines from the Atlantic salmon intestine and to use them in vitro or in Petri dishes to rapidly and inexpensively identify the soybean components that are causing inflammation. This should speed up the development of fish feed in which fishmeal has been replaced with soybean meal. In the long run this will be beneficial to both Canadian aquaculture and soybean industries and to the Canadian consumer.