Roles of dietary taurine in fish nutrition

Taurine is a conditionally essential amino acid in fish nutrition. The present study addressed the practical application of examining published data on fish nutrition over the past 20 years, emphasizing the topic of taurine by using computational tools and their applications. According to the published articles, an increased linear growth of research occurred, with Japanese flounder being the most examined fish species. Dietary taurine supplementation has several beneficial effects in fish nutrition, such as survival, growth, feed utilization, protein and energy retention, intermediate metabolism, anti-oxidation, anti-stress, disease resistance, muscle texture and reproductive performance. Also, there are negative effects in some species. Dietary taurine exerted effects on several gene expressions and enzyme activities; these are important in taurine metabolism in fish. These genes and enzymes included taurine transporter (TauT), cysteine dioxygenase (CDO), cysteamine dioxygenase (ADO), cysteine sulfonate decarboxylase (CSD) and pretrypsinogen (Ptry). Plant protein-based diets with taurine supplementation are recommended because of the absence of taurine in plant protein.