Precision nutritional regulation and aquaculture

•Precision nutrition involves ‘precision feeding’, ‘precision metabolism’, ‘precision output’ and ‘precision support’ theoretically and systematically.•This review intends to elaborate the concept evolution, theoretical system, and composition of the technical system of precision nutritional regulation.•Especially, we summarized the pathway and regulation of nutrients including protein, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in fish. Recently, the concept of precision nutrition has emerged in aquaculture, and there is increasing discussion on this topic. Some researchers have defined precision nutrition as precision feeding, which means that the nutrient contents of feed should meet the requirements for an animal’s optimal production performance and achieve minimum fodder waste at the same time. In practice, precision nutrition should include a comprehensive survey of the animal’s genetic background, living habits, metabolic characteristics, water ecological environment and other factors. Precision nutritional regulation covers every level, from genes, cells, and tissues to the whole organism. Through interacting with genes, nutrients activate or inhibit signalling pathways/networks within cells, which regulate gene expression and protein synthesis and subsequently affect the composition, content and deposition sites of carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and trace elements. Therefore, we propose that precision nutritional intervention needs to be carried out from the perspectives of ‘precision feeding’, ‘precision metabolism’, ‘precision output’ and ‘precision support’ simultaneously. This review intends to elaborate the concept evolution, theoretical system, and composition of the technical system, together with other aspects of precision nutritional regulation. This knowledge will provide a theoretical reference for the sustainable development of the aquaculture industry and the harvesting of quality products.