Comparative transcriptome analysis of ovary and testis reveals potential sex-related genes and pathways in spotted knifejaw Oplegnathus punctatus

Oct 1, 2017Gene

Gene activity differences between ovaries and testes reveal possible sex-related genes and pathways in spotted knifejaw fish

AI simplified

Circadian Biology on OpenScience ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Abstract

A total of 262,392,754 reads were generated from RNA-seq data of the spotted knifejaw's testis and ovary.

113,794 unigenes were identified after filtering and assembly of the sequencing data.
4496 differentially expressed unigenes were detected when comparing the ovary and testis, with 1986 in females and 2510 in males.
Specific expression was noted for 469 unigenes in females and 859 in males.
Key regulators for gonadal development were identified, including foxl2 in females and dmrt1 in males.
Unigenes such as bmp15, nanos3, sox9, and amh may regulate gonadal physiology and germ line cell maintenance.
Pathways related to p53, apoptosis, Jak-STAT, and neuroactive ligand-receptor interactions were highlighted as important for gonadal development and gametogenesis.

AI simplified

The spotted knifejaw (Oplegnathus punctatus) is a newly emerging fishery species inhabiting the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii, China, Japan and Korean Peninsula. Little information on the mechanism of gonadal development and gametogenesis in this species could be used for research and breeding work. In this study, RNA-seq technology was applied to generate a deep-coverage sequencing data of spotted knifejaw testis and ovary. A total of 262,392,754 reads (ovary 133,403,270, testis 128,989,484) were generated from the cDNA library. After filtering and assembling, a total of 113,794 unigenes were obtained with the N50 of 1658bp. Unigenes were annotated with multiple public databases, including non-redundant protein databases (NR) (42,460, 37.31%), Swiss-Prot (33,632, 29.56%), eukaryotic Orthologus Groups (KOG) (26,195, 23.02%), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) (10,978, 9.65%), and Gene Ontology (GO) (30,514, 26.82%). By comparing ovary and testis, 4496 differentially expressed unigenes (1986 in female, 2510 in male) were identified, in which 469 were specially expressed in females and 859 in males. The expression levels of 12 unigenes were confirmed by qRT-PCR. In addition, 35,054 simple sequence repeats were identified. By GO and KEGG analyses, a set of unigenes related to gonadal development and gametogenesis were filtered. foxl2 was deduced to be a key regulator for gonadal development and gametogenesis in females and dmrt1 in males. bmp15, nanos3, sox9 and amh were likely to function in the regulation of gonad physiology and germ line cells maintenance in ovary and testis. Interestingly, p53, apoptosis, Jak-STAT and neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction pathways were found to be pivotal in regulating gonadal development and gametogenesis of spotted knifejaw in various aspects. This study provides a fundamental support for further research in reproduction biology, population genetics and functional genomics in spotted knifejaw.

Full Text

Full text is available at the source.

View full text (XML) ↗View full text ↗

Comparative transcriptome analysis of ovary and testis reveals potential sex-related genes and pathways in spotted knifejaw Oplegnathus punctatus

Abstract

Full Text

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief

Abstract

Full Text

Related papers

You found one interesting study. We’ll send the next 7.

what lands in your inbox each week:

Recent issues from the circadian biology brief