Preserving natural color of fish specimens : Taking goldfish (Carassius auratus) as an example

• Main Authors: Wen, Ting-Chun, 溫庭均
• Other Authors: 李家維
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/d7h89y

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 分子與細胞生物研究所 === 101 === Formalin and 70% ethanol are used to preserve fish specimens for long time, since they are effective in preserving morphology; however, this method is not able to preserve the natural color. In this research, we provide a new approach to preserve the natural color of goldfish (Carassius auratus). Goldfish has bright orange color, which are mainly composed of carotenoid. This particle has long chain of conjugated double bonds thus is very unstable and susceptible to environmental factors such as light, temperature, pH and oxidation. Therefore, to stabilize carotenoid in fish body is the key step of preserving its nature color. We attempt to stabilize carotenoid by various antioxidants (ascorbic acid, erythorbic acid, sodium sulfite, sodium pyrosulfite, sodium bisulfite) and compare their abilities of preserving color. The results show that each antioxidant has different abilities to preserve color of goldfish, and the ascorbic acid is the best in our experiments. Additionally, we observe that the color preserved by mixing ascorbic acid and sodium pyrosulfite is more closely to the original one. These results suggest that antioxidants can effectively preserve the color of goldfish and also have the potential application to other fish specimens.