Comparative study of digestive enzymes in fish with different nutritional habits. Proteolytic and amylase activities

This work provides a comparative study of the proteolytic and amylase activities in six species of fish with different nutritional habits: rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata), European eel (Anguilla anguilla), common carp (Cyprinus carpio), goldfish (Carassius auratus), and tench (Tinca tinca). Trout and carp showed the highest digestive proteolytic activity. When proteolytic activity was determined in a wide range of pHs, the highest values in the digestive tract of all species were found at alkaline pHs, except in eel where activity could be detected only at acid pHs. Eel showed the lowest digestive proteolytic potential among all the species studied. With respect to amylase activity, the omnivorous species presented higher activity than did the carnivores. Among the carnivorous species, the lowest activity was found in trout. The ratio of total amylase:total proteolytic activity was higher in omnivorous fish species, the carp having the greatest value, whereas in trout this ratio was lower than one. Digestive enzyme activity declined as the incubation temperature decreased, but this trend varied depending on the fish species and the tissue analyzed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.