Comparative transcriptome analysis of testes and ovaries for the discovery of novel genes from Amur sturgeon (Acipenser schrenckii)

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Sturgeons (Acipenser schrenckii) are of high evolutionary, economic, and conservation value, and caviar isone of the most valuable animal food products in the world. The Illumina HiSeq2000 sequencing platform was used to construct testicular and ovarian transcriptomes to identify genes involved in reproduction and sex determination in A. schrenckii. A total of 122,381 and 114,527 unigenes were obtained in the testicular and ovarian transcriptomes, respectively, with average lengths of 748 and 697 bp. A total of 46,179 genes were matched to the nonredundant nr database. GO (31,266), KEGG (39,712), and COG analyses (20,126) were performed to identify potential genes and their functions. Twenty-six gene families involved in reproduction and sex determination were identified from the A. schrenckii testicular and ovarian transcriptomes based on functional annotation of non-redundant transcripts and comparisons with the published literature. Furthermore, 1309 unigenes showed significant differences between the testes and ovaries, including 782 genes that were up-regulated in the testes and 527 that were upregulated in the ovaries. Eleven genes were involved in reproduction and sex determination mechanisms. Furthermore, 19,065 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were identified in the expressed sequence tagged dataset, and 190,863 and 193,258 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were obtained from the testicular and ovarian transcriptomic databases, respectively. This study provides new sequence information about A. schrenckii, which will provide a basis for the further study of reproduction and sex determination mechanisms in Acipenser species. The potential SSR and SNP markers isolated from the transcriptome may shed light on the evolution and molecular ecology of Acipenser species.

Transcriptome analysis provides insights into differentially expressed genes and long noncoding RNAs involved in sex‐related differences in Amur sturgeon (Acipenser schrenckii)

“…In A. fulvescens , the expression of Foxl2 and Sox9 was no significant difference in gonads, even if they were all high expression in ovaries (Hale et al, ). In Amur sturgeon, Foxl2 was found to be more highly expressed in the ovaries, whereas Sox9 was found to be more highly expressed in the testes in this study which was the same as the result of Jin et al (). Further research is needed to illuminate the relationship between these two genes and whether they have similar functions to those found in other vertebrate species.…”

“…Compared with the results from 454 sequencing of A. naccarii which contained over 55,000 high quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) (Vidotto et al, ) and A. fulvescens which a total of 20,471 unique sequences were obtained with a mean length of 186 bp (Hale, McCormick, Jackson, & DeWoody, ), our result had higher sequencing coverage with bigger number of unigenes for the advantages of Illumina platform and assembly strategy. Besides, the number of unigenes was also significantly bigger than that in the previous study (Jin et al, ). Even so, the number of unannotated sequences was much larger than that of the annotated ones.…”

“…In the previous study, investigations on sex‐related differences or sex differentiation in fish mainly focused on gonad (Lin, Wang, Zhao, Gao, & Chen, ; Tao et al, ; Wang et al, ). Meanwhile, the transcriptome analysis of testes and ovaries from A. schrenckii had also been reported (Jin et al, ). Furthermore, Huang, Xiong, Kang, Mei, and Gui () found that some genes in the liver could also regulate sexually dimorphic in zebrafish.…”

Single nucleotide polymorphism markers with applications in aquaculture and assessment of its impact on natural populations

“…Twenty-six gene families involved in reproduction and sex determination were identified from testicular and ovarian transcriptomes and a number of SNP markers for further study were discovered in Amur sturgeon, Acipenser schrenckii (Jin et al, 2015b). The wreckfish hapuku (Polyprion oxygeneios) is not externally sexually dimorphic and need over 5 years to reach sexual maturity in captivity, this hinders broodstock management (Brown et al, 2016).…”

iTRAQ-based quantitative proteomic analysis of embryonic developmental stages in Amur sturgeon, Acipenser schrenckii

“…A full understanding of the regulatory proteins and pathways involved in the embryonic development of A. schrenckii , and the effects of microelements and antioxidants on the embryonic development of A. schrenckii is therefore urgently needed. Several microRNA libraries and mRNA transcriptomes have been constructed for Acipenser species, and sex-related and reproduction-related genes have been investigated 4–8 . However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have analyzed the changes in protein expression in this species.…”