PubMed · 2026-06-16
This review examines how molecular analysis tools — transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics — can reveal hidden health damage in farmed fish when their diets shift from marine-based to plant-based proteins, problems that standard growth metrics entirely miss. The authors argue for a 'precision aquafeed' future where feed formulas are built on multi-omics data rather than just weight gain and feed efficiency ratios.
Standard metrics like Feed Conversion Ratio and Specific Growth Rate act as a 'black box' — they cannot detect gut dysbiosis or metabolic stress from plant-based diets until fish show visible, often irreversible, performance losses.
Transcriptomics can identify early molecular markers of soybean meal-induced enteritis in fish gut tissue, enabling dietary intervention before phenotypic damage appears.
Full integration of multi-omics layers to map the diet-microbiota-host axis is currently blocked by high cost, lack of data standardization, and limited bioinformatics infrastructure at commercial scale.
