Skin metabolome reveals immune responses in yellow drum Nibea albiflora to Cryptocaryon irritans infection

Abstract The yellow drum Nibea albiflora is less susceptible to Cryptocaryon irritans infection than is the case with other marine fishes such as Larimichthys crocea, Lateolabrax japonicus, and Pagrus major. To investigate further their resistance mechanism, we infected the N. albiflora with the C. irritans at a median lethal concentration of 2050 theronts/g fish. The skins of the infected and the uninfected fishes were sampled at 24 h and 72 h followed by an extensive analysis of metabolism. The study results revealed that there were 2694 potential metabolites. At 24 h post-infection, 12 metabolites were up-regulated and 17 were down-regulated whereas at 72 h post-infection, 22 metabolites were up-regulated and 26 were down-regulated. Pathway enrichment analysis shows that the differential enriched pathways were higher at 24 h with 22 categories and 58 subcategories (49 up, 9 down) than at 72 h whereby the differential enriched pathways were 6 categories and 8 subcategories (4 up, 4 down). In addition, the principal component analysis (PCA) plot shows that at 24 h the metabolites composition of infected group were separately clustered to uninfected group while at 72 h the metabolites composition in infected group were much closer to uninfected group. This indicated that C. irritans caused strong metabolic stress on the N. albiflora at 24 h and restoration of the dysregulated metabolic state took place at 72 h of infection. Also, at 72 h post infection a total of 17 compounds were identified as potential biomarkers. Furthermore, out of 2694 primary metabolites detected, 23 metabolites could be clearly identified and semi quantified with a known identification number and assigned into 66 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Most of the enriched KEGG pathways were mainly from metabolic pathway classes, including the metabolic pathway, biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, taurine and hypotaurine metabolism, purine metabolism, linoleic acid metabolism, phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis. Others were glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism, glutathione metabolism, and alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolism. Moreover, out of the identified metabolites, only 6 metabolites were statistically differentially expressed, namely, L -glutamate (up-regulated) at 24 h was important for energy and precursor for other glutathiones and instruments of preventing oxidative injury; 15-hydroxy- eicosatetraenoic acid (15-HETE), (S)-(−)-2-Hydroxyisocaproic acid, and adenine (up-regulated) at 72 h were important for anti-inflammatory and immune responses during infection; others were delta-valerolactam and betaine which were down-regulated compared to uninfected group at 72 h, might be related to immure responses including stimulation of immune system such as production of antibodies. Our results therefore further advance our understanding on the immunological regulation of N. albiflora during immune response against infections as they indicated a strong relationship between skin metabolome and C. irritans infection.