Investigation of the characteristics of different shrimps by species and habitat using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry based metabolomics.

Approximately 6.5 million tons of shrimp are consumed annually worldwide. The price of shrimp is greatly influenced by species and habitat (e.g., farmed vs wild-caught). In recent years, false labeling has become a problem in the shrimp industry. False labeling can include species, habitat (whether farmed or wild-caught). This problem is motivated by the potential for economic benefit, and significantly reduces the consumer reliability of food. As a first step in establishing a detection method, we took a metabolomics approach to elucidate phenotypic diversity by assessing genetic differences and environmental factors. Metabolites identified by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis were subjected to multivariate analysis to identify metabolites that correlated with shrimp species and habitat. The characteristics based on species and habitat were observed respectively. For species, the classification approximately tended to be based on taxonomy. It suggests that species different have strong effect on metabolite profiles. In particular, the difference between Panaediae and Pandalidae was significantly observed, and some fatty acids such as palmitoleic acid and elaidic acid are abundant in Pandalidae. Among Pandalidae, Japanese tiger shrimp was characterized by metabolites related to purine metabolism. For habitat, farmed shrimp had a high amino acid content, and wild caught shrimp had a high fatty acid content. Habitat-based separation was observed in Indonesian black tiger shrimp samples, indicating that metabolites such as glycolic acid, phosphate, and pentadecanoic acid are characteristic components of natural black tiger shrimp.