Abstract
The sex of Chinese tongue sole (Cynoglossus semilaevis) is determined by both genetic sex determination (GSD) and environmental sex determination (ESD), making it an ideal model to study the relationship between sex-determination and temperature. In the present study, transcriptomes of undifferentiated gonads from genetic females and males, as well as differentiated gonads from males, females, and pseudomales under high and normal temperature treatments were generated for comparative transcriptomic analysis. A mean of 68.24 M high-quality clean reads was obtained for each library. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between different sexes and environmental treatments were identified, revealing that the heat shock protein gene family was involved in the high temperature induced sex reversal. The Gene Ontology (GO) terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways that were enriched in pseudomale and genetic female comparison included neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, cortisol synthesis and secretion, and steroid hormone biosynthesis. Furthermore, weighted gene co-expression network analyses were conducted on all samples, and two modules were positive correlated with pseudomale under high temperature. An illustrated protein-protein interaction map of the module identified a hub gene, hsc70. These findings provide insights into the genetic network that is involved in sex determination and sexual differentiation, and improve our understanding of genes involved in sex reversal under high temperature.
Highlights
Dimorphic traits play a dominant role in evolution and behavior of animals, and genes regulating sex-determination and sexual development have long been of central interest in developmental biology
To further identify genes involved in environmental sex reversal (ESR), we exposed C. semilaevis to high temperature conditions during early sex differentiation from 30 dpf to 3 mpf
We focused on identifying gene expression changes in the gonad of males, females and pseudomales at the undifferentiated and post-differentiated stages using transcriptomic analysis
Summary
Dimorphic traits play a dominant role in evolution and behavior of animals, and genes regulating sex-determination and sexual development have long been of central interest in developmental biology. In GSD, the primary sex is determined during fertilization and regulated by heritable genetic components (Budd et al, 2015). Organisms possess ESD have undifferentiated gonads until they reach a sensitive period perceiving the environmental factors to determine the sex (Shao et al, 2014). Some GSD species, mainly fish and reptiles, can change their primary sex without changing the genotype when exposed to environmental factors, a process known as environmental sex reversal (ESR) (Sarre et al, 2011; Shao et al, 2014; Holleley et al, 2015). Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) exposed to elevated temperature can override genetic sex determination, and the females can be reversed to produce pseudomales (Baroiller et al, 2009). Blue tilapia (Oreochromis aureus), Japanese flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus), European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), turbot (Scophthalmus maximus) and Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia) undergo temperature induced ESR (Conover and Fleisher, 1986; Desprez and Mélard, 1998; Yamaguchi et al, 2007; Diaz and Piferrer, 2015; Robledo et al, 2015; Diaz and Piferrer, 2017)
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