Work

Glutamate enhances shrimp antibacterial ability by boosting its cellular immunity

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Glutamate has been widely applied in the feed industry to promote animal growth and improve meat quality. However, it has been less applied in crustacean aquaculture. Here, we demonstrate that shrimp plasma glutamate level is correlated with its total hemocyte count, and injection of glutamate could increase shrimp's total hemocyte count within 2 h and co-injection of Grik2 inhibitor could abolish this effect. Further feeding experiment showed that addition of 0.25% glutamate in diets could increase glutamate percentage in shrimp muscle, enhance its anti-vibrio ability without affecting its growth. In addition, differential transcriptome analysis indicates that the shrimp fed with diet containing 0.25% glutamate could effectively upregulate the expression of immune-related gene like C-type lectin 2, cell cycle related gene like G1/S-specific cyclin-E-like and Hippo pathway related gene like transcriptional enhancer factor TEF-1-like. These data demonstrate that glutamate could enhance shrimp's anti-vibrio ability and improve its flavor. Thus, it could be applied as an anti-disease feed supplement for shrimp aquaculture.

Source: Comparative Immunology Reports