| Summary: | Cortisol is the main glucocorticoid hormone promoting compensatory metabolic responses of stress in teleosts. This hormone acts through genomic and membrane-initiated actions to exert its functions inside the cell. Experimental approaches, using exogenous cortisol administration, confirm the role of this hormone during short (minutes to hours)- and long-term (days to weeks) responses to stress. The role of membrane-initiated cortisol signaling during long-term responses has been recently explored. In this study, <i>Sparus aurata</i> were intraperitoneally injected with coconut oil alone or coconut oil containing cortisol, cortisol-BSA, or BSA. After 3 days of treatment, plasma, liver, and skeletal muscle were extracted. Plasma cortisol, as well as metabolic indicators in the plasma and tissues collected, and metabolism-related gene expression, were measured. Our results showed that artificially increased plasma cortisol levels in <i>S. aurata</i> enhanced plasma glucose and triacylglycerols values as well as hepatic substrate energy mobilization. Additionally, cortisol stimulated hepatic carbohydrates metabolism, as seen by the increased expression of metabolism-related genes. All of these responses, observed in cortisol-administered fish, were not detected by replicating the same protocol and instead using cortisol-BSA, which exclusively induces membrane-initiated effects. Therefore, we suggest that after three days of cortisol administration, only genomic actions are involved in the metabolic responses in <i>S. aurata</i>.
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