Growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) are key links to nutritional condition and growth regulation in teleost. To understand the endocrine mechanism of growth regulation in grouper, we cloned the cDNAs for grouper GH and IGF-I and examined their mRNA expression during different nutritional status. Grouper GH cDNA is 936 base pairs (bp) long excluding the poly-A tail. It contained untranslated regions of 85 and 231bp in the 5'- and 3'-ends, respectively. It has an open reading frame of 612bp coding for a signal peptide of 17 amino acids (aa) and a mature hormone of 187aa residues. Based on the aa sequence of the mature hormone, grouper GH shows higher sequence identity (>76%) to GHs of perciforms than to GHs of cyprinids and salmonids (53-69%). Grouper preproIGF-I cDNA consisted of 558bp, which codes for 186aa. This is composed of 44aa for the signal peptide, 68aa for the mature peptide comprising B, C, A, and D domains, and 74aa for the E domain. Mature grouper IGF-I shows very high sequence identity to IGF-I of teleost fishes (84-97%) compared to advanced groups of vertebrates such as chicken, pig, and human (=<80%). Using DNA primers specific for grouper GH and IGF-I, the changes in mRNA levels of pituitary GH and hepatic IGF-I in response to starvation and refeeding were examined by a semi-quantitative RT-PCR. Significant elevation of GH mRNA level was observed after 2 weeks of food deprivation, and increased further after 3 and 4 weeks of starvation. GH mRNA level in fed-controls did not change significantly during the same period. Hepatic IGF-I mRNA level decreased significantly starting after 1 week of starvation until the 4th week. There was no significant change in IGF-I mRNA levels in fed-controls. One week of refeeding can restore the GH and IGF-I mRNA back to its normal levels. Deprivation of food for 1-4 weeks also resulted in cessation of growth and decrease in condition factor.

The most economical combination of dietary protein and feeding levels for milkfish culture in brackishwater ponds was determined. Milkfish juveniles (average weight, 5 g) were stocked at 7000/ ha and fed two diets containing 24% or 31% dietary protein at 2 or 4% of body weight. There was no interaction between feeding level and dietary protein on growth, feed efficiency, and energy assimilation of milkfish. This indicates that the response of milkfish to change in protein levels is not influenced by ration size. Regardless of protein levels, the final weight, weight gain, specific growth rate, and production of milkfish were significantly higher (α = 0.05) when fed at 4% body weight than at 2%. As culture progresses, differences in weights of fish fed varying protein levels were still insignificant. This could be attributed to the balanced amino acid profile of both diets. The higher growth at the 4% feeding level could be due to the higher amount of amino acids available for protein synthesis. Higher energy assimilated by milkfish at higher feeding rate demonstrates that energy supply also influences growth. Partial budgeting analysis shows that bigger profits can be earned by using a 24% protein diet with balanced amino acids at a feeding rate of 4% of body weight. The greater amount of feed given at higher rate can be compensated by faster growth and higher production.