Abstract
To study the relevance of the dietary essential amino acid (EAA) pattern and the free EAA pattern in fish body, free amino acid (FAA) compositions in the whole blood, plasma, erythrocytes, hepatopancreas, and skeletal muscle of carp Cyprinus carpio were determined at 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24, and 72h after feeding with a casein-gelatin diet. Correlation coefficient between the dietary EAA pattern and that of free EAA in the whole blood, plasma, or erythrocytes became rapidly higher after food intake, reached to the highest levels within 4h, and fell gradually to non-significant levels by 24h. The highest correlation coefficients between the whole blood, plasma and erythrocytes, and the diet were 0.8961, 0.8273 and 0.7382, respectively. Similar trend was also found in the hepatopancreas whose highest correlation coefficients observed at 4h was 0.9142, while the skeletal muscle did not show any significant correlations to the diets during the experiment. Thus, EAA pattern of the diet was best reflected in free EAA pattern of the whole blood, plasma, and hepatopancreas at 4h after food intake.
