Amino acid content in muscle tissue of the brown ‎meagre, Sciaena umbra Linnaeus, ‎‎1758 (Pisces: ‎Sciaenidae) as candidate species for aquaculture ‎in the Black Sea, ‎Turkey.

In order to understand the nutritive quality focusing on amino acid profiles in the muscle ‎of the brown meagre, Sciaena umbra, and to evaluate the potential of the species as a ‎diet source for both human consumption and as candidate species for aquaculture, the ‎main amino acid components in the muscle of this species were analyzed. Amino acid ‎compositions were determined with the LC-MS/MS (Liquid Chromatography Tandem ‎Mass Spectrometer) instrument. Although a total of thirty-nine amino acids were ‎detected / searched by LC-MS/MS instrument, only twenty-four amino acid values were ‎determined. Seven of these amino acids are essential amino acids (EAAs), two are semi-‎essential amino acids (SEAAs) and fifteen are non-essential amino acids (NEAAs). The ‎most abundant amino acids in brown meagre meat were found as glutamic acid ‎‎(13.88%), lysine (10.43%), aspartic acid (9.62%), leucine (8.32%), and glycine (6.87%), ‎respectively. These five amino acids accounted for more than 49% of the total amount ‎of amino acids. The levels of the total amino acids (ΣAA = 24.17 g/100g), total essential ‎amino acids (ΣEAA = 9.42 g/100g), total non-essential amino acids (ΣNEAA = 12.39 ‎g/100g), total semi-essential amino acids (ΣSEAA = 2.36 g/100g) for brown meagre in the ‎Black Sea were higher than those reported in the other areas. This study shows that the ‎brown meagre has high nutritional qualities and the results are also presented as an ‎important criterion for obtaining information on amino acid nutritional requirements for ‎aquaculture and healthy human food source for dietitians.‎