Abstract
This study presents a novel non-lethal sampling method for assessing fatty acid (FA) composition in juvenile European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) using subcutaneous white muscle biopsies. This research aimed to evaluate the suitability of the biopsy for FA analysis using two lipid extraction protocols and comparing them to a lethal routine method. The results showed that a mass of fresh tissue as low as 1.4 mg provided good quality FA chromatograms for both reserve and membrane lipids. Although the biopsy method displayed high variability in terms of FA quantity among intra-individual replicates, it showed good FA profile repeatability in both reserve and membrane lipids. The study highlights the potential of this non-lethal approach for studying FA dynamics in fish, with its application being particularly promising for ecological and experimental studies. However, careful biopsy implementation is recommended to account for potential lipid droplet and lipid distribution variability within the tissue.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Fany Sardenne for her help and suggestion on previous versions of the manuscript. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the manuscript.
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This work was supported by the Brittany region to Marie Vagner.
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All fish manipulations were performed according to the Animal Care Committee of France (ACCF) and performed at the Ifremer facilities in Plouzané (France, Agreement number: B29-212-05). All fish manipulations were performed under anesthesia using tricaine (200 mg l−1, ethyl 3-aminobenzoate methane sulfonate), and all efforts were made to minimize animal suffering during manipulation.
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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. We hereby disclose that Dr. David Mazurais, a contributing author of this article, also serves as an Editor on Fish Physiology and Biochemistry board, and affirm that all review and acceptance processes for this publication were conducted impartially and without bias
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Péron, M., Simon, V., Le Grand, F. et al. Non-lethal sampling method for the analysis of white muscle fatty acid profiles in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). Fish Physiol Biochem 49, 1381–1390 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10695-023-01262-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10695-023-01262-w