A 7-week feeding experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary sodium butyrate on growth performance and expression of intestinal development related genes in Carassius auratus. The grade levels of sodium butyrate at 0.0 (control), 1.0, 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5 g/kg were added to the basic diets respectively. Each diet was randomly fed to a group of 30 fishes per tank in triplicates. The fish were fed three times daily by hand at a rate of 3% –5% of body weight for seven weeks. The results showed that dietary sodium butyrate significantly affected growth, foregut villus height and crypt depth, and the expression levels of CREB and CDX2 in Carassius auratus (P<0.05). Compared with the control group, the weight gain(WG), special growth rate(SGR), protein effi-ciency rate(PER), as well as the condition factor(CF) were the highest in fish fed with diet supplemented with 2.5 g/kg sodium butyrate and they were increased at 25.76%, 16.46%, 28.91% and 8.37% respectively, and it also shows an increase of the apparent digestibility coefficients of dry matter and protein, foregut villus height at 8.36%, 6.21% and 34.22%. Further, the sodium butyrate apparently up-regulated the CREB and CDX2 gene ex-pression at 51.11% and 42.13%(P<0.05). Overall of the results demonstrated that sodium butyrate may promote the growth of Carassius auratus via affecting intestinal villus height ,CREB and CDX2 genes’ expression and the optimun sodium butyrate supplementary concentration is 2.5 g/kg for Carassius auratus.

Journal of Fishery Sciences of China 2013, (4)