Functional amino acids in fish nutrition, health and welfare

Abstract

Protein is the most expensive part of fish diets and supplies amino acids (AA) for energy, growth, protein synthesis and as substrates for key metabolic pathways. Functional AA is a term used to describe AA that are involved in cellular processes apart from protein synthesis. A deficiency, or imbalance, in functional AA may impair body metabolism and homeostasis. Recent years have seen an increased interest in AA to increase disease resistance, immune response, reproduction, behavior and more. This has led to a boost of commercially available functional fish feeds that aim to optimize fish performance and quality of the product. This review aim to collect recent findings of functional AA and of how they may improve fish health and welfare. It will focus on functional properties of some of the most studied AA, namely arginine, glutamine, glutamate, tryptophan, sulfur amino acids (methionine, cysteine and taurine), histidine and branched chain amino acids. Where information is not available in fish, we will point towards functions known in animals and humans, with possible translational functions to fish.