Taurine is a conditionally essential amino acid in fish nutrition. The present study addressed the practical application of examining published data on fish nutrition over the past 20 years, emphasizing the topic of taurine by using computational tools and their applications. According to the published articles, an increased linear growth of research occurred, with Japanese flounder being the most examined fish species. Dietary taurine supplementation has several beneficial effects in fish nutrition, such as survival, growth, feed utilization, protein and energy retention, intermediate metabolism, anti-oxidation, anti-stress, disease resistance, muscle texture and reproductive performance. Also, there are negative effects in some species. Dietary taurine exerted effects on several gene expressions and enzyme activities; these are important in taurine metabolism in fish. These genes and enzymes included taurine transporter (TauT), cysteine dioxygenase (CDO), cysteamine dioxygenase (ADO), cysteine sulfonate decarboxylase (CSD) and pretrypsinogen (Ptry). Plant protein-based diets with taurine supplementation are recommended because of the absence of taurine in plant protein.

Amphioxus, a cephalochordate, is an ideal animal in which to address questions about the evolution of regenerative ability and the mechanisms behind the invertebrate to vertebrate transition in chordates. However, the cellular and molecular basis of tail regeneration in amphioxus remains largely ill-defined. We confirmed that the tail regeneration of amphioxus Branchiostoma japonicum is a vertebrate-like epimorphosis process. We performed transcriptome analysis of tail regenerates, which provided many clues for exploring the mechanism of tail regeneration. Importantly, we showed that BMP2/4 and its related signaling pathway components are essential for the process of tail regeneration, revealing an evolutionarily conserved genetic regulatory system involved in regeneration in many metazoans. We serendipitously discovered that bmp2/4 expression is immediately inducible by general wounds and that expression of bmp2/4 can be regarded as a biomarker of wounds in amphioxus. Collectively, our results provide a framework for understanding the evolution and diversity of cellular and molecular events of tail regeneration in vertebrates.