Comparative transcriptome analysis reveals the potential influencing mechanism of dietary astaxanthin on growth and metabolism in Litopenaeus vannamei

•This study evaluated the effect of astaxanthin on L. vannamei metabolism using transcriptome sequencing and examined the growth performance parameters of L. vannamei after dietary supplementation with astaxanthin.•This study suggested that dietary astaxanthin was useful for improving the growth performance of L. vannamei. It activated many important pathways and improve growth performance by promoting expression of many significant genes.•This study suggested that too large a dose of astaxanthin had a limited effect on growth performance because it inhibited expression of important genes while promoting expression of other significant genes.•From the metabolic point of view, this study explained that the excessive addition of astaxanthin can reduce the promotion of the growth of L. vannamei•This study improve the theoretical basis for using of astaxanthin in the culture of L.vannamei. The Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei), as one of the most valuable crustaceans, is widely distributed in China. Dietary astaxanthin has multiple functions in L. vannamei, such as promoting growth and antioxidant production. In the current study, shrimps were fed a diet which was supplemented with 0, 50, or 100 ppm astaxanthin for 4 weeks, and the specific growth rate (SGR) and weight gain were significantly greater in treatment groups compared to control group. We performed the transcriptome analysis of hepatopancreas of L. vannamei and detected 14,336, 14,780, and 14,400 genes, respectively. 598 and 285 genes were significant differentially expressed compared with the control group, under supplementation with 50 and 100 ppm astaxanthin, respectively, of which 434 and 104 were up-regulated and 164 and 181 were down-regulated. Through the KEGG pathway analysis, we found that the significant differentially expressed genes were mainly enriched in metabolic-related pathways, such as metabolic pathway, pyruvate metabolism, and glycolysis/gluconeogenesis pathway. Twelve genes were chosen to validate the results of RNA-Seq by qRT-PCR. This study provides valuable information about the effect of astaxanthin on L. vannamei. The genes and pathways, which are identified in the current study, can help to reveal the molecular mechanism responsible for the effect of astaxanthin on metabolism.