Dietary berberine alleviates high carbohydrate diet-induced intestinal damages and improves lipid metabolism in largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)

Yulong Gong; Qisheng Lu; Yulong Liu; Longwei Xi; Zhimin Zhang; Haokun Liu; Junyan Jin; Yunxia Yang; Xiaoming Zhu; Shouqi Xie; Dong Han

doi:10.3389/fnut.2022.1010859

Dietary berberine alleviates high carbohydrate diet-induced intestinal damages and improves lipid metabolism in largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)

Front Nutr. 2022 Sep 23:9:1010859. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.1010859. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Yulong Gong¹, Qisheng Lu^{1

2}, Yulong Liu^{1

2}, Longwei Xi^{1

2}, Zhimin Zhang¹, Haokun Liu¹, Junyan Jin¹, Yunxia Yang¹, Xiaoming Zhu¹, Shouqi Xie^{1

2

3}, Dong Han^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
² College of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ The Innovative Academy of Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
⁴ Hubei Engineering Research Center for Aquatic Animal Nutrition and Feed, Wuhan, China.

Abstract

High carbohydrate diet (HCD) causes metabolism disorder and intestinal damages in aquaculture fish. Berberine has been applied to improve obesity, diabetes and NAFLD. However, whether berberine contributes to the alleviation of HCD-induced intestinal damages in aquaculture fish is still unclear. Here we investigated the effects and mechanism of berberine on HCD-induced intestinal damages in largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). We found dietary berberine (50 mg/kg) improved the physical indexes (VSI and HSI) without affecting the growth performance and survival rate of largemouth bass. Importantly, the results showed that dietary berberine reduced the HCD-induced tissue damages and repaired the barrier in the intestine of largemouth bass. We observed dietary berberine significantly suppressed HCD-induced intestinal apoptosis rate (from 31.21 to 8.35%) and the activity level of Caspase3/9 (P < 0.05) by alleviating the inflammation (il1β, il8, tgfβ, and IL-6, P < 0.05) and ER stress (atf6, xbp1, perk, eif2α, chopa, chopb, and BIP, P < 0.05) in largemouth bass. Further results showed that dietary berberine declined the HCD-induced excessive lipogenesis (oil red O area, TG content, acaca, fasn, scd, pparγ, and srebp1, P < 0.05) and promoted the lipolysis (hsl, lpl, cpt1a, and cpt2, P < 0.05) via activating adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK, P < 0.05) and inhibiting sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1 (SREBP1, P < 0.05) in the intestine of largemouth bass. Besides, we also found that dietary berberine significantly promoted the hepatic lipid catabolism (hsl, lpl, cpt1a, and cpt2, P < 0.05) and glycolysis (pk and ira, P < 0.05) to reduce the systematic lipid deposition in largemouth bass fed with HCD. Therefore, we elucidated that 50 mg/kg dietary berberine alleviated HCD-induced intestinal damages and improved AMPK/SREBP1-mediated lipid metabolism in largemouth bass, and evaluated the feasibility for berberine as an aquafeed additive to enhance the intestinal function of aquaculture species.

Keywords: AMPK/SREBP1 cascade; berberine; carbohydrate; intestine health; largemouth bass; lipid metabolism.