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

如果未来水产养殖要持续下去，就必须改进鱼类饲料。一个主要原因是目前鱼粉在鱼饲料中的使用。鱼粉是用大部分在公海捕捞的鱼制成的。这种资源很可能不能以目前的捕捞速度进一步开发，因为海洋中的鱼类数量似乎普遍在下降。因此，尽管水产养殖对加拿大人的经济和健康很重要，但其扩张是有限的。克服这一饲料限制的一种方法是用植物性材料取代鱼粉。在植物中，大豆被认为是一个很好的经济选择。然而，就加拿大最重要的水产养殖物种之一--大西洋鲑鱼而言，以大豆为基础的饮食是有害的。它们会导致鱼类肠道发炎，阻碍生长和生产。目前正在努力克服这一问题，方法是确定有害的大豆成分，并最终将其移除或阻止其行动。然而，传统的鱼类饲养试验使这种鉴定过程变得缓慢和昂贵。我们建议从大西洋鲑鱼的肠道中开发细胞系，并在体外或培养皿中使用它们来快速且廉价地鉴定引起炎症的大豆成分。这将加快鱼饲料的发展，其中鱼粉已被豆粕取代。从长远来看，这将对加拿大水产养殖业和大豆行业以及加拿大消费者都有利。

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.